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Aristotle, Dilbert And The Working Life
Decisions about work may be the biggest ones many of us ever make, And though career decisions are perhaps the biggest ones we face, we often make them unthinkingly, ignoring or perhaps unaware of the enormous consequences for our happiness, our peace of mind, the meaningfulness of our lives.
Our paradoxical culture -- particularly the tech part -- both celebrates work and continually strives to eliminate it. While this employers value efficiency above all other work traits, workers seek creativity -- interesting jobs that are lucrative and satisfying, that offer fulfullment and identify.
So Joanne B. Ciulla's very fine book The Working Life: The Promise and Betrayal of Modern Work, tackles a timely and nearly universal conundrum: Ciulla argues that many people have moved beyond a simple work ethic to let work engulf them and deprive them of a lot of the good things in life. It's dangerous, she says, that so many contemporary workers depend on their jobs as the primary wellsprings of individual self-esteem, when all the job asks of them is more work with less security.
This profound emphasis on work, says Ciulla, who has taught at Harvard and Oxford and is now an ethicist at the University of Richmond, is dangerous.
Companies have no qualms laying off, downsizing or exploiting thousands of workers but, contrary to popular belief, have not generally cut their management ranks. While companies savagely root out low and mid-level workers in order to stay lean and mean, executive salaries have shot through the roof. Ciulla cites research showing that U.S. managerial staffs have grown without interruption despite the loss of employment for millions of workers. What drives many workers to be more productive, Ciulla argues, isn't loyalty, a fierce work ethos or new tools of the booming hi-tech economy, but fear. They know they are vulnerable.
Commitment, loyalty and trust as bonds between employers and employees have nearly vanished. General cynicism about work permeates culture -- that's why "Dilbert" appears in 1,700 newspapers in 51 countries. The strip makes its way onto bulletin boards and refrigerator doors around the country; it's the voice and spirit of contemporary tech and office workers.
The reality is less amusing. Many workers feel exploited by their employers, writes Ciulla -- overworked, subject to dismissal or reductions, forced to work for idiots who are overpaid and perform too little. They face fundamental new issues about work and life. If the old social contracts of corporate America have been obliterated by the competitive demands of the new economy, where does that leave workers like Ciulla's character, identified only as Mary, whose company forces her to choose between putting in more time at work with no guarantee of reward, or working nine-to-five and having time to spend on things like her children and her church. "To do the latter may mean risking her job. More and more people find themselves in this bind," says Ciulla. And Mary's lucky she's not working for a Net start-up. "Such choices require reflection on what is important and how one wants to live his or her life."
In the tech world, as in others, these choices prove particularly tricky. Industries offer lots of jobs, many high-paying, so people tend to plunge into high-intensity employment before they even have a chance to consider life's other dimensions or the alternatives they might want to explore. Once employed, workers are tethered as never before to brutally competitive work environments and all sorts of techno-devices which keep them bound to their desks or jobs much of the time. Ciulla says many will come to regret not having considered their work choices more deliberately or seriously.
But they may not have had much time. Technology links people to their jobs more than was possible before. People are expected to remain constantly available via e-mail, cellphone and wireless gadgetry. The lines between work and "other things" people like Mary want to do grows blurrier over time, which means the consequences of choosing work poorly get bigger.
The Working Life looks at workplace innovations like flex time programs, which Ciulla calls the most radical management innovations of the century. Most management initiatives have been geared towards helping people fit their lives into work. Flextime promises some opportunity to shape work around one's life, if that's what workers want to do -- some opportunity.
The machines that Aristotle fantasized about have become the commonplace tools of everyday life in industrial society, Ciulla points out. Among other changes, technology means that work no longer involves being at a particular place at a regular time. Theoretically, we can be where we choose, although few companies trust their workers to do that.
Companies have betrayed their workers by making efficiency their paramount concerns. Workers can alter that reality by getting pickier about the the work they do and valuing non-work related activities more highly. We can, if we wish, choose to consume less and be less dependent on salaries. We can choose work that gives us mobility and independence. We can pursue other interests as intensely as we pursue job success.
Ciulla points out that this involves asking fundamental questions:
Do we know what kind of life we want? Are we willing to give up something for it? Is the life we have now worth what we are sacrificing for it?
Meaningful work is rare, says Ciulla, but it's there for people who really want to find it. A work-dominated life is perfectly acceptable, she says, if it satisfies the worker. But if it doesn't, "Then we should start thinking of how to fit work into our lives instead of fitting our lives into our work."
You people all have a serious lack of perspective. Jeezus, you're all acting as if the job situation has reached a level of hellishness never seen before in the history of mankind.
We're progressing as a species, and jobs have never been better.
My father was a construction worker for 25 years. He had to break his ass with physical labour. Twice in his carreer he came home depressed because someone was killed on the site from an industrial accident.
I, on the other hand, sit in front of a monitor and twiddle my fingers on a keyboard. People never die here at work. I surf the web... and get paid for it! Hell, I'm making more now than my dad did when he finally retired... and he was well paid!
Man, it annoys me when the richest generation in the world's history whine about how bad they got it.
Derek.
Been there, done that. I was at a shop where most of us were nonunion but one girl had started at a different plant and was in the engineers' union. They gave all of us an across-the-board raise: then the union squawked. They said that the company couldn't give her a raise unless they gave the other union members a raise. So the rest of us got our raises and she got nada. I'd have to be pretty desperate before I wanted that kind of union protection.
The greatest blow to communism and Marxism (yes, they are different things) was the collapse of a nation that so many people believed to be communist. It's really quite an unfortunate situation, because (as in so many other situations) many intelligent people are believing what they've been told, instead of doing their own research and forming an educated opinion.
Education is no substitute for intelligence, true - but intelligence cannot always compensate for a lack of information.
How do you go about finding a) what you want to be doing and b) a job that lets you do it?
The valuable insight here is that War IS Capitalism. In fact, Capitalism is a sort of artifically maintained state of constant warfare.
Thank you for your time.
Boys are raised to interalize values of material success, to see themselves as men only in so far as they make much money and wield power.
Heh... that brings back memories...
After my first gf dumped me, a close (female) friend who was consoling me made a comment which, while I can't remember it in detail, encouraged me to work towards a position of power, as [roughly quoted] "women are attracted to powerful men".
I don't know if she was speaking of her own interests or simply reciting a stereotype. However, I can say that this statement has had some effect on my thought process in making career decisions since.
Just a side note. Formally, the Economics Prize is not a Nobel Prize. It is "Bank of Sweden's Award in memory of Alfred Nobel". It is not awarded by the Royal Academy of Science. The awarded work covers not models on how individuals should make their choices as much as how governments, institutions and corporations could expect the world to react to structural and economic change. For example: What happens if I build this freeway here? Will people use it? How will it affect the economy of its neighborhood?
"We mustn't be caught by surprise by our own advancing technology" -- Aldous Huxley
I have been working at home as a web programmer for a few months now and I hate it. I am eating, sleeping, working, watching TV etc. within the same walls day in and day out. It is starting to feel like a prison. I am active looking for a new job right now. If it is all right for you, fine. But it is clearly not for everyone.
"We mustn't be caught by surprise by our own advancing technology" -- Aldous Huxley
60 hrs/wk for the rest of your working life will feel like a million years!
Obviously Dilbert is and exageration, but the point of it rings too true to many technicial workers. That is that they are being managed by people who don't understand the work their people are doing.
I wouldn't say that the boss has to be able to do 100% of the job, but there shouldn't be any blank stares when basic concepts are discussed. Too often, bad technical decisions are made by people with too little understanding without consulting the people who know better. It's then up to those people to "just make it work anyway". And it had better be on time and under budget or everyone gets fired.
my $0.02
Well then its the highway....really it is ok to use them.
Funny and I thought Perl == Paid employment recently located
Pay attention to the other posters in the thread who have real life experience. Learn from them. Don't argue out your ass about things on which you have no clue. :-)
From http://pespmc1.vib.ac.be/PETERPR.html:
This link is an interesting (short) take on an extension to that principle.After you've read that, I suggest you rearrange your prejudices awhile. :-)
You have got to be kidding. Why should employers get every possible right with no responsibility? As employees, we agree to a fairly strict set of rules (the contract) in exchange for benefits we derive from employers. Money is one of those benefits. There is no reason that security (I'm not talking about a hug when you're sad; it's job security - knowing you'll still have money to eat next month) shouldn't be one of the benefits included in the package.
We give up a lot of our time when we're young and eager and bright and motivated to these companies. What do we get in exchange?
people have been brainwashed since the new deal to think everybody owes them something
If I don't work for a company, they owe me nothing. If I pay no taxes and don't vote, the government owes me nothing. But if I enter into a contract (legal, social, implied or otherwise) with a company or a government, I damn well want them to hold up their side of the bargain.
---sheath
every idea was thought of a hundred years before..doesn't mean it shouldn't ever be raised again..work is a big issue for people.
jonkatz@slashdot.org
I'm from South Dakota, too. Get out while there's still time! And please send me your resume; if your blood is warm I can find a job for you in the valley.
...enough said.
I play Nerd-Folk!
Managers in the real world ARE that dumb.
All the more for us then
You're welcome.
I have some Irish friends here in Boston, and they've all said, at some point, the wished they'd stayed in Ireland. Having been there several times, I can see why.
Whoa. If you're getting to the point where you're living in the same world as Dilbert, that's definitely like seeing the canary keel over - time to move on. The most absurd (and funny) thing about Dilbert is that no matter how bad things get, they never even think about finding something even marginally better.
"Great men are not always wise: neither do the aged understand judgement." Job 32:9
I have "spent some time in those shoes" as you put it (unlicensed engineer, having never gotten my PE cert.) I work in the software industry now, which is (probably) even more... interesting. The again, you should know that.
The majority of the situations in Dilbert are unreal. When was the last time you had one coworker kill another in a meeting, or had give yourself a sponge bath at the office water fountain because your funding had been cut, or... you get the picture. Adams, like other cartoonists, sometimes exaggerates in order to find humor.
I'm not saying that Dilbert doesn't show any "real" situations. Adams takes reader suggestions for strips, after all :-) And I've heard (and read) various horror stories about PHBs and PHCs (pointy-haired companies). Maybe part of my enjoyment comes from knowing that there are such clueless companies and people out there, and thankfulness that I have (so far) been able to avoid them (/. excepted, of course :-)
"Great men are not always wise: neither do the aged understand judgement." Job 32:9
Nope. I has a taste of what that's like when I was a junior officer in the Navy. I can manage, and I can do a decent job of managing both people and materials, but it's a draining and uncreative job.
The problem is, managers are interrupt driven. Every 15 minutes or so, then need to shift focus to a new task. I think just about anyone can be taught to think that way, but for most people, it's not natural, and eventually wears on them... and wears them down.
I'm a software developer now; it's more fun, and it lets me work in a way that suits me better (concentrating for 4-5 hours, go home and take a few hours off, work another 4-5 hours.) Most companies larger than 50 people will have some sort of technical expert/architect/prima donna development track that lets senior technical folks avoid having to go into management. I think this is a solid sign that a good company understands what drives and motivates some of their best technical workers.
In today's job market, particularly in the technology sectors, there's no reason why anyone should feel the need to stay with an ouright abusive, stupid, or otherwise damanged company/employer/manager. It's like tying a sack of bricks to your back before you go for a few laps in the pool. Sure, there are some people who can do it; but the majority of people would struggle for a bit and then end up at the bottom. So why swim with a bag of bricks when you don't really have to?
"Great men are not always wise: neither do the aged understand judgement." Job 32:9
I've been interested in computers since probably the fourth grade. I began seriously studying programming in seventh, and was very comfortable with three languages (Pascal, C, and LISP) by my first "Computer Programming" class my first year of high school.
In collage, I decided to enroll in a dual Computer Engineering / Electrical Engineering degree. Basically, I wanted to broaden my knowledge into hardware-specific areas. I interned at Microsoft, graduated and worked at IBM. Now I'm working with former college friends, starting up a web application business.
Yes, I've worked long hours. Yes, most days involved brain overload for 12 hours straight.
But I loved it. Every single minute. I've known for a long time that computer programming was the field for me. It's more than a profession, it's been a hobby and a creative outlet for longer than I can accurately remember. And most of my friends and many of my colleagues feel the same.
How many fields allow this? Do lawyers try mock cases at home on the weekend for fun? Do doctors dissect cadavers like we dissect I-Openers: just to see what's going on?
I think we're lucky to be in a field that challenges us to think critically and creatively. I love the fact that the line between work and play is so blurred.
...is your practical-joking co-workers changing your slashdot .sig
If this is the way you look at your job, perhaps you should investigate doing something that you enjoy more.
I work outside of Chicago as a software engineer for 40-45 hours a week and paid overtime. Sure, I'm not pulling down 100K+ like some of you 80-hour folks, but on the other hand I have time to spend with my wife and time to enjoy doing what I really want to be doing with my life. And since I'm happy at home, when I go in to work I'm generally interested in being there and accomplishing my tasks there to the best of my professional capabilities.
IMHO, going for the money above all else is a huge mistake that many people make when getting out of college. Every day I'm glad I didn't go that route.
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
That's what I'd like to know :) I would guess location is the difference?
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
I used to work for a large (25k+ employees) company, and I can testify as to their management theory:
The first task for a manager is to delegate. They learn that they should delegate tasks to other people so they can get them completed in a shorter time. They end up delegating their managerial duties to other people. These other people then are managers, and learn the first rule of management.... Delegate, Delegate, Delegate. So it goes on. Everyone delegates, they end up creating more and more layers of management, and guess what? The people at the bottom get screwed into doing things that aren't thier job, or are forced to get 12 levels of approval just to get something small done.
Karth
"Choosing the kind of work we do" "we" ? "WE" ?!?!?! who's we here you wanna be?!?!?!?
I believe there's a certain subliminal message within Dilbert.
No matter how much Dilbert or Wally or Ashok are abused, they don't blow up or quit! They just keep on plowing that same infertile field.
Wouldn't it be nice and different if Dilbert brought a shotgun to work?!
I have to echo this - telecommuting is the best. I've been working at home for a web development company for about a year and a half now, and I love it. I don't have to tell my co-workers to shut the hell up while I get something done, the boss doesn't wander in to "see how things are going" every fifteen minutes, and I'm much more productive.
I've found some caveats, though.
First, it's far to easy to let work bleed into every corner of your life when you don't have the physical seperation between work and real life. The freedom to set your own hours can become a curse real fast.
Second, as much as I don't miss stupid coworkers hassling me, I do miss the meatspace interaction with coworkers I like. email and instant messaging go a long way towards a *cough* virtual office, but it's not quite the same. If at all possible, get some face-time in once in a while.
Third, it does take some time to get into your groove, especially if you're used to working in an standard office environment. I found that stupid rituals, like wandering up the hill for a coffee first thing in the morning, went a long way toward breaking myself in. Just something that signals the start (and the end) of the day.If you can manage those things, you're set. I highly recommend it.
This is the voice of World Control. I bring you Peace.
Somewhere on the Web (SleightNews) - Slashdot: News For Nerds, Stuff that matters, a web site catering to the eclectic tastes of techies, suddenly suffered from a massive dip in readership following the posting of Jon Katz's latest article: "Aristotle, Dilbert And The Working Life". Upon reading this article, a full 50% of the full-time employed techies reading the Slashdot article committed mass uncoordinated suicide, apparently in a fit of angst, when confronted with the depressing nature of their labor.
The remaining 50% demanded 300% pay increases, inducing managers worldwide to commit mass suicide. There was much rejoicing.
The bottom line is that if you simply won't be happy with your job if you don't like what you are doing and don't like the atmosphere you're working in. Therefore, you better make sure that you take that job b/c you are interested in the project you will be working on, not because it pays $$$,$$$. Otherwise you will end up miserable everyday in exchange for making some extra money. Is that worth it to you? For some people it is, for others its not...
If you feel passionately about something, you might want to consider a job at a non-profit, where you will be working with like-minded people and hopefully find more meaning in your job, for example.
Just my $0.02
witold.org
Actually, they'll explain to you how "this project is different" or they've "figured out how to break it down better" and then they'll add more programmers.
Considering that I see my co-workers more than my loved ones, I've always felt choosing work was more imprtant than choosing a spouse. Of course, don't ask me, I've had two spouses and two different computer careers.
So long and thanks for all the fish . . . !!!
At the risk of sounding like an MS basher (which I'm)
I doubt that it was religious prejudice, but rather prejudice against ethics.
Everybody remembers Office Space, another rallying cry of American tech workers. The part that struck me is where he says, "I'm going to have to work Saturday". If my boss came up to me and said I'd have to work Saturday I'd tell him no. It's really that simple.
At the company I worked at this summer (I'm a student) the management had a meeting in which they went off on mandatory overtime. All the workers were cowering in fear contemplating lost Saturdays. A co-worker stood, inturrupting the manager, and said, "I don't work overtime. If you don't like that too bad." Then he sat down. That guy still works there, still gets paid more than most of the people who work overtime. We run afraid too much.
Anyone who cannot cope with mathematics is not fully human.
My wife just found out how true this is. After being involved in a car accident on the job, her boss showed little to no concern for her well being, and continued to have her work at the fair she was scheduled for (lifting boxes is bad on a back injury). We're probably going to sue ... that's why laws exist, to protect good-hearted people like my wife from blood-sucking wenches like her boss.
My wife didn't want to leave the company "high and dry," as it were. There would be no one to work this fair, and her boss made no effort to have her go home and recourperate. All of this over a fair booth that cost a grand-total of $30.
Look out for yourself, people. You're the only one who will.
Where did you get the idea that a non-technical manager would be able to manage technical resources competently? The only reason why a technical manager is hired in a lot of cases is because they are an interface to the business people upstairs who are unable to grasp how to fit technology into their business plans, processes, models, etc. Personally, I've never met a good non-technical manager. In a highly competitive environment where learning is absolutely necessary to being good, not having the smarts means not measuring up to standards. That's why they don't get respect.
With all the whinging out there I'd just like to say that with tech work I've been able to do what I've always wanted, namely live in a few different countries and REALLY find out what they are like.
;-) )
( BTW, leave the US
In addition, the thing that used to really suck, namely using touch with people, is no longer valid due to Al Gore's invention.
In short, I really believe that right now people have MORE freedom than they have ever had, and
people in tech jobs have more freedom than virtually anyone else. Now we just have to have the courage to deal with it !
I work 10-5 ..granted that i dont make that much...50K/yr after taxes. my company owes me security. you know why ? becuase i run the systems and i wrote the software they sell...and none of the other developers understand how to keep it running anyway. without me == no company. boo hoo. :) needless to say, you *make* your own security. new deal or not.
Yes, if you start comparing men and women's salaries across the board the pay difference is much more drastic than if you compare equivalent jobs.
Thank god someone else pointed it out, although, why do you need to mention that you are a feminist when you are clarifying data from a study? What does being a feminist have to do with making sure we all know where the numbers are coming from?
Yes, I at least understood your point. In fact, I was glad to see someone make it when any discussion about pay inequity tends to get bogged down in irrelevant "but women tend to have lower paying jobs/trade off a better personal life for lower pay" and so on.
I just think its funny (odd funny, not haha funny) that whenever we discuss this, moat women feel compelled to state whether they self define as a feminist. I mean, no one ever feels the need to say "2+2=4 (btw, I'm a feminist"
I think this is an excellant point. My father worked 3 jobs to help raise his 5 children. I rarely saw him growing up, as he would come home, eat, and try to sleep for an hour or two. It was a decision they made to have so many children (three of us were adopted), and they did what they had to so we had food on the table and presents under the Christmas tree. I have a job now that never requires me to work overtime and pays me very well. My wife and I are expecting our second child, and we didn't even flinch we we got the news.
Bottom line: Be thankful for what you have!
But it sure got my wheels spinning. I got to thinking about 2 sci-fi novels I read in the 60's.
"The Pleasure Seekers" by ??? -- A company has a product that guarantees complete happiness in life--wanna buy it?
"The Consumer Society"?? by Kornbluth?? -- A man beomes a hero to society when he discovers that the more you consume (destroy) the more powerful you become.
I'm off to my used bookstore to see if I can find them.
1000 SlashDot sigs
But you have to make it exciting. If you just wait for the excitement, it won't ever come to you.
Our secret is gamma-irradiated cow manure
Mitsubishi ad
We apologize for the inconvenience.
I dunno about that...
I'm in Boston. I work in the 128 region (Burlington specifically). All of my friends who work just a little further out (west of 495, southern NH, etc.) refuse to listen to me griping about salary, because jobs in the 128 region pay LOTS more than those just 20 miles further out. Seriously. Even living in Boston, I make double what the average family of 4 IN BOSTON makes. I'm definitely getting the impression that the cost of living may be high, but the salaries pretty much make it irrelevant.
So you're getting paid a decent wage to do absolutely nothing? Get access to the company bandwidth and make friends with Napster. Everyone's favorite app has helped me pass many a boring day at work. Or go to www.sodaplay.com and stay there until thhe boss hands down some work.
Or, use company gear to work on personal projects. As long as it looks reasonably official and you're keeping busy, few people will bother to ask you questions.
Personally, I thought it was everyone's dream job to get the position that looks great on a resume and effectively boils down to getting paid to sit on your ass and find a more exciting job. That's me, and I'm loving it. The work, what there is of it, gets done and done quickly.
I don't know about the rest of the tech crowd, but I have a personal life, a novel I'm working on, and some multimedia gook that I'm trying to ifnd an animator to assist me with. Work pays the bill and that's all it does for me- the less I see of it, the happier I am.
--- Bigger bits, softer blocks, tighter ASCII.
I read it a little while ago and the jist of it is that a career is a game and what matters is how you play the game. There is alot more to the book than what I can pull of the top of my head but I did use it (and man am I happy I did - I choose a position based on my being productive and happy over money and title and this is the best part - I like getting up in the morning and going to work : ) )
I was in a similar situation.
Was a programmer, but got a new job where the entire project was scaled back soon after I joined, and they only gave me testing to do. Nothing wrong with testing, but I wasn't able to create my own tests or write any scripts, or even to automate the tests. Just boring repetitive manual labor that they could have hired any non-technical person off the street to do.
I stayed (big mistake), hoping it would get better and thinking it would look bad on my résumé to leave early, but finally quit after 8 months.
To my dismay, the jobs I got offered after that were nearly all testing. And it was very awkward when interviewers wondered exactly what cutting-edge stuff I'd been working on over the past 7 months... basically fsckall.
If you're young, you can recover from a setback like that, but for an older programmer it's the kiss of death. If you had a series of programming jobs but your last job only involved entry-level testing... you've got the scarlet letter D for dinosaur tatooed on your forehead. Rather than fight to get my career back on track, I took a break from the computer industry... and never went back. Laughing all the way to the bank today, but still pissed off.
If you're not learning anything in a job, and not advancing your career, get out right away. If interviewers ask why you want to leave your previous job so soon, just tell the truth.
I have had the good fortune of working from home as a 100% telecommuter. I worked from my home in Canada for a company in California for a full year doing software development.
IT ROCKED!!! I worked super-efficiently and had lots of time for family and recreation!
Now, it didn't get like that without any effort. In fact, it took about three months before I really got the hang of it.
The reason I mention this, is because I felt this was absolutely the best possible work environment. If you can do this in your job, take the option! Work hard to make it work for your employer, because in the long run it is by far the most healthy work environment possible (assuming that your home environment is good).
Helping with organizational effectiveness is our job.
It's a somewhat biased view, and is being exagerated by the /. masses
Things like Dilbert are a fairly acurate portrait of tech life, but from the point of view of a techie... I'm quite sure it would be possible to write an alter-dilbert strip viewing things from the pointy haired boss point of view which basically makes all engineers out to be the idioting un-knowing ones who beaver around all day long, whilst the bosses actually make the company descisions that result in all the techies profiting with the stock they have...
Think about life from the other side of the fence once in a while, you might actually learn something and be a little more appreciative of your bosses and colleagues, but don't expect to have a meaningful conversation with a boss about kernel hacking, any more than they would expect to have a conversation with you about a business plan and capex/opex etc etc
-~ Given a choice between two theories, take the one which is funnier. ~-
...JohnKatz. I feel so much better now that you opened my eyes... :)
Hey I'm not trolling!
Just another coder...
"You might want the take her short meaningful work quiz."
Yeah, so where is the link?
Uh yeah but it's not like everyone on /. hasn't made these points over and over in different discussions. (And usually much more concisely.)
This woman's book sounds like the typical fodder run by "Lifestyle" pages in newspapers: a saggy, windbaggy extrapolation of something utterly obvious.
All the papers need to add to her cliches are little sidebars such as the (Katz-suggests-we-might-like-to-take-it) "meaningful work quiz".
!!!! please!!!!
...and it helps to boycott all the crappy books churned out by "ethicists at the University of Richmond" to try and eke their own bucks out of said Gravy Train.
However, my teenage factory job _was_ far superior to my Seattle dot.com stint. Factory stayed in biz; ran well; good union fought for good conditions and wages and saw that they were kept. (Even a winning bowling team)
Dot-com: unorganized, know-nothing bosses, endless meetings, Dilbert to the max...plus endless strings of hosannas in parise of MS (their former employer and perceived future savior)
I've had a manager complain thati didn't finish my project quick enough, then when i was done, wanted to see what i had spent all my time doing. She didn't know how big the system was, nor did she even know what it did. She had a vague idea, that was half wrong. Why is it too much to ask that a manager know the work he/she is managing? Maybe someone managing a programming team should know how to program, so that they can form more realistic evaluations, and know how ot properly handle the task.
I agree that the Tax Structure hinders the company and its relationship with workers. When it is an advantage to buy equipment rather than retain or hire more help due to the tax code something is wrong.
Why cann't there be tax breaks for holding onto workers and creating employment?
The thing that proponents of such a view have trouble with is exactly your view that there is a genetic factor that dictates our behavior which is fully linked to our sex. I don't beleive that there has yet been any scientific basis for such a claim, mostly due to a lack of control.
I won't deny that there are years of evolution involved, millions even, but I think that the specific evolution that determines our social roles isn't genetic, but rather social evolution. I could go so far as to say that a basis for our early societies (pre settlements) would have been inherited from our primate ancestors.
The only problem is that arguments to the contrary of indifference between sexes seem to support a setup where ones sex is the largest determinant of ones social role. Is there really a genetic basis for such a state, or are we largely blowing the genetics out of proportion? (but thankfully not as much as when it was assumed that being white meant you were a freeman and being black meant that you'd have a natural tendancy to becoming a slave/commodity).
I too live in South Dakota. I make pretty good money. I have had three different IT jobs in the same small town in the past 5 years. One not so good (too much travel), one a good job but with low pay, the latest is a good job with good pay (and a good IT budget). Good jobs exist out here, you just have to look for them, or they have to look for you, which was the case with my current job.
One thing you need to do is pay attention to what you want out of a job and stick to it. Have core principles for your work and for your personal life and don't violate them.
Notice I said principles for your personal live _and_ your work. The principles I have for work allow me to keep focused what needs to be done for the business. If you administer things right you can get things running pretty smoothly (meaning do it the right way). Sure emergencies happen and I get called in, but that's part of the job. The goal is to minimize that kind of occurance. It can be done. Oh, and you need to work at getting management buy in on doing it your way. Luckily, I have a good boss who supports and understands my position, even goes some steps beyond what I do when it comes to business justifications, and that really helps.
Amen, brother. I work for one of the companies you mentioned and have worked for another one of them. You are correct, they are technical leaders.
In response to the comment this post will land under (assuming your viewing nested).
To talesout: If you don't like SD, leave. No one is stopping you. I'll agree that Sioux Falls has some strange city ordinances. I espically like the don't feed the geese or else one (but thats another story). All in all I like it better out here, if you don't then go. You remind me of a friend of mine who always talked about going to the big city (MPLS/ST. Paul), years later he's still in South Dakota. The reason I think he's still here is that he actually likes it. You however, just appear to want to complain instead of do something about it.
They measure time, because it's harder to measure productivity and efficiency (and it takes effort to do so).
It's a book review, not a website review. (At least that's my guess as to why there's no quiz to be found.)
If you think the situations in Dilbert are "freakin' unreal", and if you think the comic's appeal lies in the unreality of the situations, then maybe you should try spending some time in the shoes of an engineer in corporate America.
The situations in Dilbert are usually very realistic. The appeal of the comic lies in the reader's ability to identify with the insanity of very real situations.
Scott Adams simply takes reality and then has his characters comment on it in a brutally honest way. In real life, people often don't say what they really think or mean, which is what makes Dilbert such a feel-good comic: it expresses the sentiments we all hold but never have the nerve to really say.
- "It's just a matter of opinion!" - PRIMUS
This sounds much more accurate. I don't deny the exaggeration in the comic--my point was just that the situations have a strong basis in reality. The enjoyment (relief?) *does* come in part from knowing we are lucky enough to have escaped work environments like that :-)
- "It's just a matter of opinion!" - PRIMUS
Not many people figure happyness as one of the things that they think about when figuring which job to go for. Personally, I'm extremely picky about jobs - I don't even see why I should leave my suburb to work - I'm happier with my friends around me. Yet, in Ireland only 15-20 years ago, people of my age were fleeing the country to find work, because good jobs were so scarce at the time. Yeh, sure, I'm sure I'll do some travelling at some stage, but I'd rather live my life with my friends at the moment. :)
lf.o
Not everyone can make that decision. Every day life takes funding. Families take funding. Changing careers takes funding. Startup businesses take funding. So how do you propose to get all this money while you figure out what it is what you/we/I would like to do?
Personally I was thinking about switching to an programming/IT career from 12 years in Marketing, but after seeing the upcoming glut of fresh college grads I think I'll stay where I am until the next big thing comes along.
This post brought to you by your friendly neighborhood MBA.
This is ever-so-slightly OT but...
Once, the company I worked for was swallowed whole by its largest competitor. The main effect that this had was to generate a seemingly endless number of company-wide meetings. My friends and I played a game where we took notepads to the meetings and wrote down all the words that were used, which we'd never heard before except from Dilbert. It was fun for a while, but after I filled up my first sheet of paper, it was just sad.
At least now you can say someone replied to one of your comments without making fun of your grammar =)
I think you're spot-on about loyalty still existing at smaller companies. That's what kept me around as long as I did - personal connection to the people in charge. Though the engineering team at my new job is only about 20 people so hopefully there can still be a feeling of community and competence and so forth...
Anyway I rate your comment "+1 insightful" =)
La via sola al paradiso incommincia nel inferno
Um, unemployment is at an all-time low, at least here in Massachusetts. Mobility - especially in the tech sector - is a given. I don't think fear per se is a factor at all.There are just too many unfilled posts - it is entirely a worker's market. Example: Me.
2 1/2 years ago I'd never written a line of code - I was an occasional, casual windows user. Skip forward to last week, when I gave notice at my job where I've been a web developer for 2+ years, having acquired in-depth knowledge of HTML, DHTML, JavaScript, ColdFusion, SQL, PhotoShop, etc etc etc. Other than a single graduate-level programming course (Java) I am completely self-taught. (Installing Linux at home was a good step too) ANyway I scheduled 5 interviews within a week of posting my resume online, and these generated 4 offers. My new salary is nearly triple what I made 2 years ago as a total newbie, and approaches 6 figures.
My point is, there is so much opportunity out there that working yourself to death for fear of losing your job is simply unreasonable. I was a psych major and am not off the charts IQ-wise, so if I can have these experiences, so can other people.
LOSE YOUR FEAR AND GO DO WHAT INTERESTS YOU.
La via sola al paradiso incommincia nel inferno
You're probably right. But, until you can convince people who configure routers, write hardware drivers, and throw together databases that they're not "artists," forget unionizing them.
Try explaining to your average Slashie sysadmins that they're a modern eqivalent of railroad brakemen or cotton gin operators, and should be organized accordingly. See what reaction you get.
Picasso wasn't in "the painters' union." The guy who painted his house was. No one wants to see himself as more like the the latter.
Your mouth is like Columbus Day.
"Having spoken with my uncle about this, they didn't force him to get married, tell him where to put his kids in school, when to do this, when to do that...None of that was there."
,and it will improve more.
Look at what Ford did. Invaded there employees
homes, made them take "How To Be An American" classes, and yes told them who they could marry.
It did happen , it has improved
Will
Dude. I've *never* been hit in the head with a "Positive Attitude" paperweight.
-- You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
I think this illustrates how work can skew people's values. In my view, I owe my employer no intrinsic loyalty, nor do they owe me any. Loyalty is for family and friends.
Now an employer can also be a friend, and become deserving of loyalty. But how long would you tolerate a friend who instructed you to do things for them out under such conditions? Not long in my case.
I can understand your wife's reluctance to "leave them high and dry", I've felt it myself. But only because they were deserving of such feelings. It can also come from the knowledge that you're putting more workload on fellow employees who are friends, at least in part. But that's an illusion, because they have no moral obligation to do your work for nothing.
The bottom line is: if the employer cares about being left "high and dry", they shouldn't treat their employees badly. If they don't care about being left "high and dry", why should you?
-- Tim Little
No. I have been in situations where exactly the same things have happened in my office on a given day as happen in the Dilbert cartoon for that day.
It's getting to a stage where Dilbert doesn't mirror life - life mirrors Dilbert.
(Time to find a new job..)
Amen to that. My first job out of college was in a shipping/receiving department of a music store. Part of my job involved entering purchase orders into the receiving system. Apparently, even though I increased the department's throughput by about a third, I was 'never busy' and 'not working' when I was sitting at my desk entering p.o. information. (And let me mention that this was at a dumb terminal, so it's not like there was anything else I could be doing, like surfing for pr0n or something.)
Of course, it was far worse when the owner of the company told me, to my face, that I was lazy and that my race had something to do with it. I started my tech career not long after that.
Note that I'm not saying I agree or disagree with what Solomon has to say; it's an interesting book, though.
I know it's not fear that drives me but maybe I'm just wierd... but I don't think so. Besides, as someone else mentioned, working obscene overtime and in hostile environments has been shown to decrease productivity, not increase it.
The standard advice to tech workers stuck in situations like this is the Martin Fowler quote:
If you can't change your organization, change your organization.
"It is not necessary to change. Survival is not mandatory." (W. Edwards Deming)
"This message is composed of 100% recycled electrons."
This would of course be the close to the definition of "average". :-)
Perhaps you've never seen a company that doesn't hire people with 4.0 GPA's, because they "have too much book smarts, and not enough life experience"? I've seen BANKS that do this! guess what, they won't be handling MY money... If you don't call that idiotic hiring practices spawned by idiotic managers, perhaps you should re-consider what idiotic means..
Fish
Correct you are sir! (or Madam...) I'm glad to see that SOMEONE around here can read between the lines!
Fish
Like getting promoted to a writing position.
t
Everything you said is true. I just wanted to add that another reason a manager of techies should have some technical sophistication is because otherwise the employees will be bullshitting the manager continuously.
Please remember that your audience of primarily geeks/nerds on /. prefer facts and objectivity to fuzzy numbers and subjective (unsupported) comments. Statements like "managerial staffs have grown without interruption despite the loss of employment for millions of workers" don't cut it. Millions? That's odd. I thought unemployment was way down, maybe I'm wrong. So where did this Millions come from? Did the "line-worker" segment simply shrink because of the growth of the "middle managment" layer within growing enterprises and service organizations? Were these people laid off? Really? Where do these numbers come from? Honestly Jon, you're worse than some politicians.
This is characteristic of your work on /. and it is my belief that this is why you get much of the flak that you do.
Yawn. People don't like their jobs, technology is allowing work to encroach their personal time. Do we need any more books/essays with this subject?
It's really simple. If you don't like your job, get another one. Granted, the strong demand for tech people makes it easier, but even if you have trouble finding a new job, nothing is worth daily misery. Your health, relationships, and outlook on life will suffer irreprable harm.
My last job, I worked for a complete egomaniac who used the office (and consequently my coworkers and me) as a dumping ground for his psychological bilge. He's still there, but I had the pleasure of giving 5 minutes notice and leaving a few months ago. Now I'm at a position I love; great people, cool project, and all the toys we need/want. I sleep a lot better these days. You will too; stop reading about it, do something about it.
Because you live in CA, where $100K a year is equivalent to $50K a year most anywhere else, outside of the larger cities.
"We obviously need a new moderation category: (-1, Woo-fucking-hoo)" --Mr. AC
No, some (imaginary) people think their boss is an idiot because he can't tell the difference between a laptop and an Etch-A-Sketch. And it turns out there are lots of companies like this. Although it seems most of the idiots are in marketing and legal, now.
Maybe the employee is being elitist, as you suggest...but if part of the employee's job requires them to be intimately familiar with kernel code, maybe the boss should know something about it too, hmmm?
[command INSERTWITTYQUIP failed: insufficient wit]
Wish I had points to moderate this up. Unbelievable, that the parent comment's claptrap got ranked as "Insightful."
Offtopic maybe, but Signal_11 will undoubtedly fail to see this blatant contradiction of all of his paranoid delusions of "group think" and "broken moderation system," etc...
Tell me, sig, if the moderation system was truly broken in such a way that only the accepted propoganda got moderated up, how does my parent have a +4???
----(o)----
That's why you save some of your money while you do make a bit. If one is making good money, one has no excuse to not save. Just because one lives in the modern world doesn't mean one *has* to live beyond one's means.
Who says you *have* to own a new BMW? Cripes.. I make 40K, rent a nice duplex for $650, I've got a '94 F150, fiance has a '95 Taurus. Only real reason I have the truck is that I haul a great many things for my folks, and for her folks. If you really need a BMW to make you happy... you need to re-evaluate your life. Material things mean less than *real* things. I'd be just as happy if my fiance and I had one cheap little car and lived in an apartment.
{} ------ When I think of a good sig, I'll put it here
great thread! I love it when people plan their social activities around TV, "well, I'd like to go out and have some fun on Thursday, but I have ER (or whatever)." Once, I in town and hadn't seen these guys in a year, and asked them what they were up to tonight, they said, "well tonight is our ritual watching of .... (some stupid TV show)." Its like VCR's aren't even good enough, we gotta get together and experience this bullshit together, live. Get a life...
I'm a rookie C programmer with just a year of experience under my belt. I may not have done much time in the industry yet but I can speak from experience that many companies do indeed take advantage of their employees. This is a given fact, more power is more corruption. I have other programmer friends who have been in the business longer than I have and they verify this by telling me about their workplace.
My workplace is a complete nightmare that sometimes makes places like concentration camps look like a ballet dance through tulips. My manager is totally technically ignorant, yet he is the one deciding on time frames and which issues he thinks are critical that I will be addressing for the day. If I try to explain to him that I am tracking down a bug that is causing array violations and writing past the buffer all over a binary data set, he will look at me like a deer staring at headlights. How can you manage something you cannot understand or relate to? I do not think you can, you cannot make an informed decision because you cannot understand the information!
Given that the joke known as minimum wage is just barely enough for a person to live in a box and buy used gum, sometimes you have no choice but to allow yourself to get screwed. To work those extra 16 hours without pay, yet allow the company to deduct a full day's pay from your SALARIED paycheck because you caught a flu that went around the office and called in for a day because people were so scared to call in themselves. Failure to roll over on any issue pursued by your employer IS grounds for termination. But as long as you need to pay those bills and have decent food to eat you tolerate your daily torture as best possible all for that cruel insult every other Thursday.
In my opinion, if you cannot understand that which you try to manage you are in the wrong business. If you cannot understand the benefits of employee morale and the loyalty it can bring and all the benefits from that, you deserve anything bad that happens to you and your company. Work would be a great deal easier if the people holding root access and writing the code that makes things go were not treated like indentured servants.
-1 Overrated (Too many big words for me to comprehend)
word
-1 Overrated (Too many big words for me to comprehend)
Sounds like somebody was born with a silver spoon in their mouth and doesn't know what its like to be HUNGRY AS HELL and totally BROKE. Also I think in the process of hiding under your Mommy's skirt you have never enjoyed the pleasure of getting totally SCREWED OVER. Also, I don't think you understand what it's like TRYING to start your own company because it sounds like everything was handed to you. Here is Business 210 for you, a HAPPY employee is a PRODUCTIVE employee and LOYAL employee. Which means you are not wasting time with constant turnovers and training. No job is "cush" but you don't have to shit on people to get the most out of them. Wake the fuck up you spoiled brat, there are more of us that have to STRUGGLE for all we have and we won't hesitate to put your sorry spoiled baby-powdered ass in check.
-1 Overrated (Too many big words for me to comprehend)
C'mon now. I worked a McDonald's job. At one. For $5.50 an hour. And no, the low pay wasn't compensated by it being "fun." It sucked. Customers were rude, my boss was a jerk-off, and my co-workers had all the intelligence of cabbage. I would've given anything for a job that payed more than minimum wage, and even had a little stress. It's better than being yelled at for not doing anything when there isn't anything to do. Or being yelled at for not being fast enough when there is. And not being able to say *anything* in your own defense. If a manager at one of those jobs doesn't like you either you get 1) no hours or 2) fired. So really, I agree, stop complaining.
And those you cannot teach to fly, teach to fall faster!
Not to be picky, but the statistics on the disparity in wages/salaries between genders are based on men and women in equivalent jobs. :-
So, while it may be true that women are more likely choose jobs with more sensible hours, they are not the ones whose salaries are being compared to the men who are working 60 hours a week.
Sorry, I'm just a little bit of a feminist
When books burn, people are next.
I suppose the fact that I'm a feminist doesn't really have anything to do with it, however, it is the primary factor in my caring to clarify information about studies done that exposed disparities in pay between men and women.
I also think I may not have made my point quite clear in my previous post.
The point I was trying to make was this:
In the Original "So it's a choice we make" post, the theory was presented that these disparities in pay are due to lifestyle choice differences between men and women. I was trying to say that whether or not there are those differences in choice would not affect the outcome of those studies, because the men and women who were compared in them had made similar life choices. The men who choose a higher paying job that requires more hours are being compared to women who also chose that kind of job, and therefore,the studies point to some kind of inequality as the cause of the disparity, and not lifestyle choices.
When books burn, people are next.
My boss once said to me, in not quite so many words, "I don't care how much time you spend surfing the net, just make sure you're at your desk by 8AM every day." At the time, I just barely stopped myself from pointing out to him what he had just said. Needless to say, I'm looking for another job.
The problem is that managers and business people talk about increasing productivity and efficiency, but really they care more about control than anything else. They will do anything at all to increase productivity except give their people respect and freedom and treat them like human beings. I don't know if this is a holdover from the early days of factory business, or just a reflection on the weak egos of the individuals who tell others what to do for a living. But it's clearly true, and it's so common and standard that nobody questions it or really notices it.
"Research is what I am doing when I don't know what I am doing." -- Wernher von Braun
Our paradoxical culture -- particularly the tech part -- both celebrates work and continually strives to eliminate it
There is much work involved in evolving (you say eliminating) traditional methods of work. I don't see your point here...
"My mother never saw the irony in calling me a son-of-a-bitch." - Jack Nicholson
I cannot believe this got modded up to 5. Regardless of Marx's indisputable influence on modern economics, his work is not applicable due to inherent inconsistencies with the objective world.
Oh, really? Are you not enjoying the computer you were working with in order to write your posting? Are you not enjoying the house in which you live? The transportation infrastructure you use (indirectly) to haev food and clothing and all manner of good delivered to you? The immunizations you received so that your life would not be ended prematurely by disease?
The idea that capitalism cannot be enjoyed by those immeresed in it is demonstrably false, so much so as to be regarded as completely insane.
Since "Das Kapital" was written in the mid-1800s, I'm sure you would be happier if the workers had revolted back then and condemned you to a life without painkillers, full of disease and early death, slavery, and a host of other physical and social ills.
He "misestimated" it by an infinity of magnitudes. There will be no end of progress, so long as capitalism remains, and thank Jeebus for it! And while we're at it, define "worthwhile" -- what is for you, may not be for me. This kind of dumbness, especially on Slashdot, is inexcusable.
Try out Phorecast, open-source email, calendar,
The "Big Aristotle" doesn't 'dream of machines' he IS a machine!! Kobe dreams that one day he may be 'a machine', but then again Kobe dreams of palming a ball too. ((BUT it ain't gonna happen!! Because He needs MAD Predicating skills to bring down the rhetoric in order to get that-for-the-sake-of-which, as it were.)) -Shaq, aka: The Big Aristotle PS: Socrates was a Sophist! PPS: The Platonic Form doesn't exist per se
"Shop smart, Shop S-Mart"
The only fool bigger than the person who knows it all, is the person who argues with him.
I do not respond to cowards. Especially anonymous ones.
Actually, the point of communism is that you don't have to work for a living, you can sponge off everybody else.
Yeah,too bad Milwaukee is about as exciting as a black hole.
[pink beam of light]
I concur. Not only that, most of us techies are such "hot items" that companies don't want us to go so badly, you don't have to put up with any bullshit.
I've seen office situations where the management is a bunch of technically inept petty fascists and I don't see why people are just so damn afraid of their bosses because if anything, those guys are just pathetic. The only guy in our office that tried to be intimidating I brushed off and called him by his first name until he realized that those sort of tactics don't work with me. And if I ever get seriously threatened with being fired, I'm outta there (I usually leave before that even comes close to happening).
However, I've never been fired, because I make myself too damn useful to the company to get rid of (and I've worked in a few different one's too) and I don't feed bullshit to anybody. If my boss has a stupid idea, I go right ahead and shoot it down like it ought to be.
[pink beam of light]
The working life is the the same everywhere.People feel relief through talking.For 22 years ,I was a first-line supervisor for abused children.I got relief by talking about diddly-squat.
Only 50% of them are; the whole point is, which 50%?
And the humorous thing is that Streetlawyer seems to be using a great deal of his creativity for these posts. He can't even troll profoundly, sort of spewing off something he's read somewhere & fitting it into the trollCheeky fucker.
Maybe I'll begin trolling
Of course you will. They all do, eventually .......
just to show how it could be an art form
Pompous fucker.
-- the most controversial site on the Web
Oh yeh, the first part. Sorry.
-- the most controversial site on the Web
heh, heh, IHBT. Never let it be said that I am not a mindless compulsively replying Slashbot.
-- the most controversial site on the Web
Well, the answer to your question is 1834, in "The Communist Manifesto", when they specifically said that their highest goal was the freedom of mankind from capitalism, which is the system aimed at productive efficiency. But somehow, I don't think you're interested in learning about what you condemn.
-- the most controversial site on the Web
So your definition of "revolution" is going from one job, with a boss, to another job, with a different boss.
Well, fair enough, if you want to think that way, it is your right.
-- the most controversial site on the Web
Well, your alternative is to spend the next million years working 60 hour weeks, but I guess it's your choice.
-- the most controversial site on the Web
The whole point of communism is that there is *nothing* ethical about work. It's what you do to earn a living. It's not the sort of thing that you feel "loyalty" to.
And your invention of "corporatism" is spurious. It's an inevitable consequence of competition and accumulation among capitalists. To say "capitalism good, corporatism bad" is like being in favour of brewing but against beer.
-- the most controversial site on the Web
yeh, this is really more of a summary of G A Cohen's "Marx's Theory of History: A Defence". But if you don't accept the LTV (which I don't), and you go along with the consensus regarding the tendency of the rate of profit to fall, historical materialism is about allthat's left in "Capital". Which doesn't mean it's not worth reading; quite the opposite.
-- the most controversial site on the Web
If the answer is yes, enjoy your symptom.
If the answer is "no", then Karl Marx's prediction error was about 1100 years out of a million; not bad going.
-- the most controversial site on the Web
Vanguardism and Leninism have to be taken as phenomena that Marx did not advocate, that he constantly railed against, but which were predictable consequences of his work, and for which he has to take ultimate responsibility.
I think your verdict on my summary is excessively harsh.
-- the most controversial site on the Web
--- Submission is feudal.
This article left me with a very good feeling. I am happy with programming and will be happy with it until the cows come home. I dont really believe this is as much of a problem in the techie field as it is in others. We all knew people who tried to get into computing for the money -- they hated it but they tried: they failed. It has been my experience that you have to really want to learn and succeed to do well in this field.
Ahh.. and the money isn't too bad either.
OK, so this book is right up Jon Katz's alley. Not only does it take a blatantly obvious topic (Work sucks, duh. Management doesn't care, duh. Work sucks, duh.), but it also manages to write a lot of non-sense that Jon could rip off into another article of his stellar 'more obvious than the fact that we must at some point take a dump' garbage.
Why does Jon Katz write? It seems to me that he cannot, will not, or simply refuses to write about anything other than blatantly obvious topics. Isn't there any insight at all in the man? Someone that knows such big words and how to write such lengthy (and meaningless) articles should be able to occassionally come up with a meaningful thought. SHouldn't he?
Bite my yammer.
Oh were it that simlpe! True, not *every* boss or coworker is a dope, but there are *enough* people playing without a full deck that Dilbert really does reflect a good portion of workplace reality.
Java is the blue pill
Choose the red pill
There is another thing that the few people who actually think can do. It is to exploit the rest of society. Sure, I'm working in a tech related job, and I see how pointless it is (which I remind my coworkers of a lot) but noone else seems to understand. Even though I am exploiting the system and making a lot of money for such a useless job as designing interfaces to databases and such, I do think that the important people don't get paid enough at all. I think for example, teachers should be the highest paid of us all, so we could encourage more intelligent people to bring up the kids in the world as thinkers instead of just sheep. I honestly have no clue as to why people just seem to not have more than their brain stem intact. I wish I knew why the majority of people are little more than animals. There are so few sentient beings among us that it's nice to see someone else that sees life similarly to how I do.
P.S. - If you are reading this and are a moderator or a flamer and don't understand this, don't mark it down, do as the moderator guidelines suggests and mark up something that you think is of good quality. I really don't care about the whole "karma" system, but it's nice to have posts that people can actually read instead of 0 or -1.
Mas vale cholo, que mal acompañado.
This isn't anyhting new it's just a paraphrase of the old IWW slogan "the working class and the employing class have nothing in common"; and nothing could be truer.
Well it is somewhat funny. It is true, but he isn't saying anything new ... Dilbert tends to be a revelation to right wingers who always thought capitalism was just the bee's knees - until they actually started working for a living. Whatever.
--
that in this type of forum people feel free to let loose with tirades about books they haven't read. I'm not sure this is what people have in mind when they are touting the value of free speech on the internet. I read the book after hearing the author on a radio talk show, and I found it to be thoughtful and well written. There is more to it than "Bosses want people to work more for less and employees want to work less for more" or a recapitulation of Marx or Dilbert. It is well worth reading by someone who wants to think about any of the topics mentioned in the original posting or the comments.
my buddy was going on about the footage on the moon having no stars... didn't read up on it myself ... but his passion on it allowed me to doubt the whole thing.
If only my grandmother was still alive to laugh at an article like this.
Tell a woman who scooped entrails from the butcher's floor to feed her depression era family about the betrayal of the "Modern" technological economy. Would you complain about your beeper to the generations of steel workers and coal miners who worked 18 hours a day just to feed their children? Would you compare your stress and carpal tunnel to their back lung and asbestosis? Would they pity your choice to let work engulf you?
Before you cry about how bad things are, look to history. You will see how good you have it now. You have more choice to balance work and life now than at any point in history.
Just thinking from a logical sense, if you are willing to work for an idiot, what does that make the worker? I chose to not work for idiots by interviewing my interviewers when being interviewed for my job. A company who is serious about hiring quality staff, and a commitment to not become a episode of Dilbert will comprehend my serious questions as to management and how I would fit in at the potential employer. I am proud to say that I have only worked for one idiot, and as soon as that idiot was hired, I expressed that it was him or me. They chose him, no loss...there are plenty of jobs out there.
Do you like the valley? What sort of incentive could you give me to make the big move? You know SD... tell me why it's better there.
nnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnr. Wrong.
I live in SD. Extreme SE corner. I work for BioMed test-equipment firm. We're small... however, we are all about technology.
I moved to St.Paul, MN for 2 years, 'cause I thought that's where all the hot tech action would be. I didn't like it much. For example: I kept track, and in one week I spent 4.5 hours just sitting at a stop lights. Screw that.
I was born and raised here in SD, and I missed the way life is here. So I came back and was VERY picky about where I wanted to work. I accept and acknowledge that there are some SD companies that are not embracing tech, but I have worked for many that have: BapCo Engineering, where I work, Daktronics, in brookings, 3M in brookings... they are all cutting edge tech.
And they are all excellent employers.
SD people pay the second lowest taxes in the nation. We do not have an income tax. I took a 1/3 pay cut moving from St. Paul to here, and at the end of the month, I have more money left over.
Sure, I don't have a mega-mall with in 15 minutes of my house. But at night I can sit in my back yard and see a sky full of stars, I never have to locks ANYTHING, people are friendly... I could go on...
Quality of life: that's where it's at. Sure, things are simplier here. Things are DIFFERENT. But, for me, things are better.
Do you know your neighbors? Do you know the people down the street? Are you concerned about crime? Do you hate how much money you give up in taxes? Do you hate the constanst noise and light of the city? Do people go out of their way to help you?
SD has the right answer to all of these questions.
And (to continue my rant) tech focused companies are starting to come to SD, because of such things as our low taxes and cheap cost of living, not to mention an abundence of cheap land and good inexpensive labor. The area along I-29 is become a tech coridor. Places like 3M, DAkt, and BapCo are proof of that...
Ok, I think my rant is over now... but this really hits home with me...
I didn't think you were wrong for not liking the MidWest. Personally, I think SiouxFalls is an armpit. I agree with you, Sioux Falls sucks. And the mall sucks, too. I never come to Sioux Falls, for that very reason. Hmm, I guess a lot of it probably has to do with life style... I'm gathering that you don't like the style of entertainment offered in Sioux Falls or just the life style in general... I won't either. But here's why I like Vermillion (where I'm at): I enjoy the out doors. I love the outdoors. I'm not a hunter, I don't kill stuff. I don't own or watch TV. I read books. What I like: canoeing, photography, biking, roller blading, disc golf... all of which are excellent things to do in this area. Now, if want a good band or some good art of some sort, yep, I have to travel some where, and that's generally the cities. I still have friends and a brother up there, so when I want it, I can do it... it's only a 4.5 hour drive, I have a place to stay, and I know my way around the cities. But I don't have to put up with the cities shit to get it. Don't think you'll get away from the bible thumpers. THEY'RE EVERYWHERE. So, don't get me wrong. I know small-town life isn't for everyone. But it is for me. For now. Until I change.
I agree that we need some sort of organization to utilize our collective power (particularly to fight things like H1B expansion) but I am not sure a union is the best way to go. Especially for us independent contractor/consultant types.
I think a better model might be similar to the one used by lawyers and doctors, a "guild-like" organization similar to the AMA or whatever the equivalent for lawyers is.
Michelle
A union is most necessary where a company tries to cheat it's workers and give them the minimum necessary. Lest we should forget working conditions at the turn of the last century - you could go to jail for quitting your job.
Safety standards(and especially OSHA) where totally nonexistant, and employers provided no help. Get your hand ripped off in some machinery? Well, if you couldn't afford medial care, tough. The company sure wasn't going to sink any money into it. Unions forced employers to give employees fair treatment. How many large companies would *YOU* be willing to trust to give you fair treatment? There aren't a whole lot.
Some places, of course, don't need a union. If you consider machine shops, they're mostly rather small businesses, and usually are not unionized. The owners of machine shops are also rarely jerks trying to cheat their employees.
In the computer business, we DESERVE paid overtime. Seniority should be valued. Better work hours and better treatment. That's what unions can bring. Now, if the place where you work already provides those things, then you don't really need a union. Not many companies do, however. Those places need unions.
Paul Anderson
"I drank WHAT?!" -- Socrates
"Page him and get him back in here, NOW!" HaHaHaHa. That cracks me up. Whatta idiot. Whatta petty shitbag tyrant. Sounds like a candidate for the guerilla warfare treatment from his victims/employees.
Really I pitty you greatly. Jobs are just something you do to get money and usually your efforts are not directly correlated to giving yourself money but to make more money for those that own the company. Maybe that's why you have been married twice?
Respond to s
Your most interesting point, however, is the presumption that the human species should LAST millions of years. I certainly hope that is not the case; THAT form of stagnation is the most hellish vision I can
contemplate.
And just what do you want to replace it? (Note remember unless you are a very talented cat you are part of the human race).
I feel extremely comfortable in the knowing that with the right technology there is *no* way the human race will die out. We can escape the earth and go to other planets or star systems but humanity will never die.
Respond to s
I don't exactly relish the idea of spending the next million years with the same level of technology until we get incinerated by the sun. If the working class were ever to revolt and actually get rid of their current government and stay at their current level of technology life and society would stagnate and nothing about the human condition with all it's faults would ever change, ever.
Respond to s
Maybe the work is worth the effort?
Respond to s
It's better to have a stable and easy job than to be at odds with possible failure. In general if you were hired to be a programmer than most likely you will do something soon so keep reading and practicing coding until they do give you something to do.
Respond to s
How can you make an informed decision of not getting into a sweatshop software company if you've never been to a one?
By hearing upbiased objective analysis of the situation from others but that's often rare.
Respond to s
Living like the Russians did for a million years with having low levels of consumer goods, little recreation, the KGB watching you all the time. Real fun.
Respond to s
I don't see how even an idiot can hire more idiots unless the cirterion to hire such people is something that can easily fall victim to foolishness. Individual human differences are what allows for people to really do what they can and their interactions with others will randomly change things. Maybe an actual case study or some documented evidence of this so called "Peter Principle" or what not. Ancedotal evidence is not a good thing.
Respond to s
Technically it's closer to military authoritarian states than communism. The point is that Russia is the most noticeable example of Marx's principles in existence today and they failed miserably and all the while ruining the lives of many people.
Respond to s
Who's talking about Signal 11? He said Signal_11. Stop being pretentious. Live with it.
However, comma:
There are conceptual cross-overs which are required. Managers need to: a] understand *why* they're employees are doing what they do b] know enough to know when the employees are trying to screw them for what they can get and c] know enough to know which people are worth listening to.
An example: a company which shall remain nameless was started in the UK as a network carrier, ISP and so on. A man had an idea and found some people to help him fund it, and some other people to work like hell to put it together. I was employee number 23, which by some standards is quite late. Some very talented and dedicated people built the company, made it work, and put a great deal of effort into the idea.
To get more money, some venture capitalists were approached, who a] put in lots of money, but micromanaged (badly) until a (6-month predicted) network meltdown taught them to listen to a couple of people, and b] decided to make the company multi-national. Hey, good idea. So they hired a man to run the German branch of this company. They gave him the senior managing directorial position in a telco/ISP, and a position on the board with more weight strategically than his UK counterpart (who had a working, revenue-earning company) because they liked him, he'd made them alot of money with a previous venture.
A *Fax*Spam* venture. And for this he got a role in developing a new idea in the German Telco market; and because of this didn't have a clue, and because of that the company has all sorts of problems.
Go figure.~cHris
--
Chris Naden
"Sometimes, home is just where you pour your coffee"
First of all, "we" won't be incinerated by the sun for at LEAST a couple of BILLION years. I feel relatively safe on that count.
As for the worker revolt at the current level of technology, if the tech was actually spread UNIVERSALLY to every human on this planet, you'd find many billions better off than they are now, which is hardly stagnation. (Though, it could also be argued that this form of democraticization of technology would burn out this mudball far quicker than the sun will.)
Your most interesting point, however, is the presumption that the human species should LAST millions of years. I certainly hope that is not the case; THAT form of stagnation is the most hellish vision I can contemplate.
"The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws."--Tacitus, The Histories
Just asking????
www.slightlycrewed.com - Because aren't we all?
I don't see how someone could moderate this comment in particular down. Either the whole thread from Sips on down is flamebait or none of it is. In my experience, this quote is especially true:
To understand what's right and wrong, the lawyers work in shifts ...
His analysis of human history was completely bogus, and his projections about the future were (especially in retrospect) rather silly. When will these communists realize that freedom is an *end* to be pursued for it's own sake, not a means of higher production efficiency. Freaking savages.
That's a remarkably stupid comment, comrade.
Dilbert's 'Salary Theorem' states that 'Engineers and scientists can never earn as much as business executives and sales people.'
This theorem can now be supported by mathematical proof based on the following two postulates:
Postulate 1: Knowledge = Power
Postulate 2: Time = Money
As every engineer knows: Power = Work / Time.
Since Knowledge = Power, then Knowledge = Work/Time.
Since Time = Money, then Knowledge = Work/Money.
Solving for Money, we get Money = Work / Knowledge.
Thus, as Knowledge approaches zero, Money approaches infinity, regardless of the amount of work done.
Conclusion: The less you know, the more you make.
Add the risk of sounding like a MS basher (which I'm not)...
Tech is not king in their decision though. Aparently people who have strong religious beliefs "wouldn't fit in" at MS. An ex-MS employee friend of mine reports he was quite shocked when of 4 candidates interviewed for a job on his team, the one best qualified was tossed because he was Mormon and "wouldn't fit the MS mold".
Hopefully this was an isolated incident, but, religous prejudice of any sort turns me off.
I think that the unemployment figures in this country tend to be misleading. A person who has an office job during the day and a job in a department store at night, making dick at either is technically employed, but not doing well as your average every day tech worker. I think the point that was trying to be made is that companies and by extension, management demand a sort of employee loyalty from their workers even though they show no loyalty to their employees. They ask that a worker accept these lower wages for more work being done, but never come up front with the fact that the payoff will often be layoffs and firings. Who in their right mind would be loyal to a company like that?
I think that it is unfair of your employer to demand so much and reward you with so little. Before I ever entered the job market I decided that I would never let my work life interfere with my personal life since my personal life is so much more important to me. That's one of the reasons i got into the field--my skills now make me employable anywhere. This gives me a ton of flexibility. If I ever get married and my wife gets a job working somewhere and it requires that we move I can more easily make the sacrifice because I will be easily employed. My personal life will always take precendence over my professional life--no compromises.
While it is important to like what you do for a job, I think a lot of people have convinced themselves that the financial gain always promised with the long hours and poor wages will somehow fulfill them emotionally and mentally. But I see through that crap. The quality time spent with friends and loved ones is worth so much more to me than my paycheck ever is. Yes, it is nice to pay my rent and eat and buy stuff, but stuff will never take the place of those people in my life, and people who think that it can often live lives that aren't worth living.
Brandt
My bosses have always screwed me.
Uh, that was financially, though.
The problems addressed by this article don't concern the future of work. Even if they did, there's no difference between contract and 'permanent' work. With 'permanent' jobs, in most parts of the US at least, the employees can be let go just as quickly and easily as contractors. You're fooling yourself if you think that getting your paycheck through the end company rather than a head shop provides any security.
Paid vacations? Benefits? Sorry, but last time I checked, none of that was worth a 50% pay cut. Unless of course, you're a permanent employee with 5 months of vacation a year, and your health insurance provides for your own, private staff of neurosurgeons on-call. No. The myth of the happy 'permanent' worker is long since dead. That's the Dilbert mentality.
There's absolutely no reason in this economy to whine about work. If you don't like where you are, feel free to go elsewhere. It's been easier to find a job now than it ever has been in history... and high-paying ones, too! Even better, it's easy for tech workers to be contract workers. Contract workers get twice the pay, and have none of the stress of 'permanent' employees. No. There's absolutely no reason to whine about work.
For my first programming job I moved to Indianapolis (worked on the PC Game "Deer Hunter", actually :). The biggest problem with moving to the midwest for a programming position is that because the local market is smaller, it can tend to trap you in that job. The lower salaries are compensated by lower cost of living, true, but that doesn't help when you're trying to scrape pennies together for flights to Seattle to interview with other companies.
I'm now working in Seattle, btw, and I've found a couple of things: first, I immediately found a job that paid so much more that it more than made up for the cost of living increase. Second, when the first company went under, I found another job in the area, and got a huge raise to boot. After four years in the industry, I'm making just enough to buy my own (ridiculously overpriced but modestly sized) house.
I actually liked the midwest, but the bottom line is that unless there's at least a few job options in the city you're moving to, or unless you know that you can afford to fly around for interviews, be careful.
-Happy in Seattle
I am fortunate not to have ever worked in a "Dilbert" envirionment. The worst tech job I had, the managers understood the technology, and the executive (who didn't) knew enough to let us do our jobs without interference. Now I am working at a web development company where employees shoot each other with Nerf dart guns, people can be seen rolling down the hall on kick scooters and EVERYONE understands the technology. I think such 'promised lands' are the direct spawn of people who have been screwed by PHBs.
----------
Technoli
The idiots are the ones who can't admit that they don't know anything and try to micromanage everything.
Not to mention the stunningly small amount of techs that are willing to pick up the management job in order to get things done. I see it all the time. A place becomes available for a management/tech job and all of the techs refuse to take it because it involves to much direct responsibility and contact with customers etc., not to mention the inevitable suits. Then some sort of incompetent outsider gets hired and the fun starts all over again.
People replying to my sig annoy me. That's why I change it all the time.
true
My manager once informed the web department that he was incredibly dissappointed in us because we weren't able to add (to him) obvious functionality to his copy of Acrobat. This moron actually thought we could just rewrite Adobe software. And we were HTML/JavaScripters, not C++ developers.
This is the same asshole who told me that my web palettes composed of blue and orange hues needed to use "more complementary colors".
Folks who've never coded ARE NOT competent to manage coders. Folks with not even a basic understanding of the fucking COLOR WHEEL shouldn't be evaluating designs.
'nuff said. sorry if my dirty words hurt your fragile little eyes.
-- Why oh why didn't I eat the Blue Girl?
I dunno...
I think you're mostly right. There's one more factor, though. For example: I work at a place that I would never leave unless someone could pay me practically double for the same work. Why? It's great here. I've harldy worked overtime, and I've been able to make decisions about how I'm going to do things (as opposed to people above me doing that). They pay me reasonably well - at least well enough to buy a house, support my family, and keep up-to-date on technology.
But I think that, in about a year or so, I'll get bored of it and go somewhere else. When I've exhausted everything new that there is to do here, I won't be able to stand it anymore. Satisfaction from work is nice, and so is good compensation and a good working environment - and my job supplies all of that - but I can't stagnate.
I got my Linux laptop at System76.
I used to sit in company meetings and write down new words uttered by our CIO, whose IQ plus a glass of water maybe totals 85. I had about a thirty word lexicon after awhile which was quite hilarious. Unfortunately I lost it and since the words didn't really mean anything I couldn't remember them. So now I have to quit avoiding the company meetings if I want my lexicon back.
One day I feel I'm ahead of the wheel / the next it's rolling over me / I can get back on / I can get back on
I've also seen where people are promoted to management when they fuck up so badly that they can't be trusted with actual tasks. And that's where homicidal urges start to come into play, IMHO. Most companies are afraid to fire people outright for incompetence, and if a layoff isn't right around the corner, they promote the idiot instead.
One day I feel I'm ahead of the wheel / the next it's rolling over me / I can get back on / I can get back on
You're right, it is really about control than anything else. I don't think that it's a result of the weak egos involved, or that it's a holdover from early days of factory business - it's simply part of the system. The fear is that treating people with respect and giving them freedom will allow them to work well together - without needing managers. And the higher-ups at the company don't take the step of eliminating managers because they're afraid that productive, creative, autonomous groups of workers will realize that they can make more money by striking out on their own (or bargaining for more pay).
Could you imagine what would happen if you gave Scott Adams a Beowulf cluster?
JUST DO IT!
Use the company as much as they use you. Gather all the skills and schooling you can that the company is willing to give to you.
When the time is right move onto a new job or new company willing to give you more of the perks you want.
what me worry?
(first post) I wish I had scanned the article in when I had it... However, I read a little interview with Scott Adams about a year ago, regarding the Dilbert phenomenon. One thing that was asked was how he managed to come up with so much material. His response? A great deal of the material he receives via letters and email from employees of various companies. Granted, he must fantasticize (is this a word? if not, then I will file for a patent) the story somewhat: inflate the details and whatnot. However, there is a grain of truth in these stories. my 2 bits: Idiot bosses are the people who are authorized to make a decision for others, and know just enough to be dangerous.
i know how that is. Coworkers(2 of them) were working on a client/server program and had just finished the server part. They needed another program and it's license to finish the client. That wouldn't have been so bad except they needed it pronto, one of them was about to leave for another job in two weeks. So the boss orders it and it arrives seven days later. But he decides to install it and try to code the client, with no knowledge of the language or even how the server worked. It was three days later when he finally told my coworkers it had arrived. Needless to say the client didn't get finished before the one left. Eventually it was finished but why did the boss try to do that on his own?
I work at a small software shop with about 10 programmers on various products. I have noticed a few trends with job performance as related to how everyone here has chosen their profession. I can basically put each programmer into three groups. The first group is people that just like to program and choose this occupation because it is what they enjoying doing this group seems to make the best programmers. The second group tends to be musicians or teachers or whatever, and they suddenly decide they want to make more money doing something else this second group tends to make pretty good programmers though not as good as the first group. The third group is people that just decide in college that this was the way to make money this group almost uniformly sucks at programming. Has anyone else noticed this trend?
Wake up, johnnie boy. Here is some business 101: Companies are in business to MAKE MONEY. Companies MAKE MONEY by being PRODUCTIVE. Companies are not in business to coddle their employees.
Workers exchange their time for a paycheck and whatever benefits come with the job. That's the way it works. Good companies take care of their employees and offer flextime and other benefits. But they also demand high productivity in exchange for that. How else are they supposed to pay for you? Or do you poor Dilberts believe you are entitled to raises and cush jobs?
Last time I checked, nobody is forced to work anywhere this site is likely to be read.
If you don't like your job, or feel like 'the man' doesn't understand your job, GO START YOUR OWN COMPANY and shut the hell up.
Then you can see what a nightmare it can be dealing with your own lame-ass whining slacker Dilbert followers.
Otherwise GET BACK TO WORK.
Who knows, you may actually get a raise and a promotion if you do your job instead of posting on /. all the time.
Here here!
There are no victims. Period. Everyone is exactly where they want to be. Even
you. You, like everyone else, are precisely where the culmination of all *your*
decisions places you. It's called accountability, and very few people seem to
want it.
The only question is this: Are you happy where you are? Regardless of what you
*say*, the answer is *yes* if you're unwilling to change your current
situation.
No one is in their job, position, attitude, relationship(s), etc. without their
consent. The very fact that folks whine about their jobs (or any other issue,
for that matter) just indicates that it makes them happier to do so than not to
do so. If you're in a job you "hate", evidently you're happier there than you
think you'd be by doing something to change it.
Each of us is the author of our own life, regadless of whether we accept it or
not.
Whine on! Or leave. Or shut up. Or maybe even *accept* your own authorship of
your life. Whatever makes you happy.
You're right, of course. Whatever makes you happy.
I completely agree with your posting of Symbolic Hours. As a case study... I began a project 7 months ago to write a new product pretty much from scratch. We were required to have a proof of concept in a month, an beta version in 6 months and a release to market in 9 months. Despite the tight time frame we have achieved the first two of these deadlines and look like achieving the third. We have a team of 4 programmers, a manager, a technical writer and a test team. We work only 9-5, we don't work weekends and we can take time off during business hours if we need to. Even in deadline weeks we do not work more than 9-5 and we don't work weekends. Any manager trying to interfere with this program has been soundly told where to place his head. We are developers, they are actually scared of us. If you growl at them and make your deadlines they will leave you alone and sing your praises. Cheers, Scott
I live in Chico, California. It's not tiny, either, but certainly has a nice "small town" feel to it, at least inasmuch as people know my name, folks are generally friendly, etc.
However, it doesn't have the downsides you mention. The neighbors don't give a sh*t if I go to church (I don't think they do either). Heavy metal? There're often heavy metal bands playing in the town square; I haven't heard a single complaint. I've talked to exactly one bible thumper since I first moved here, and even she wasn't that persistent at all.
Oh, and CSU Chico spent some time holding the "#1 Party School in America" title (as awarded by Playboy). Walk around a few blocks on any Friday night and you'll run into a party. Unless you and whoever's running it are already on bad terms, you (even as a stranger) are welcome to walk right in and make yourself at home. Come by on Halloween and you'll find the streets full... I won't even get started on what happens 'round here on St. Patty's Day or Labor Day.
So stop complaining and find yourself a better small town. Trust me, they don't all suck.
Um, your boss sounds very stupid. I have to wonder who would be dumb enough to work for someone like that :)
http://rareformnewmedia.com/
You may not have been in the work environment for very long. :-)
Let me assure you: in very static businesses, like insurance and the phone company (which is what Dilbert is based on), this kind of idiocy is ROUTINE. It is the NORMAL way of doing things. It's exaggerated a bit for effect, but Dilbert is based on truth. No individual company could have ALL the things wrong with it that Dilbert's does and survive -- but almost any individual company could have one or two of them and still make it.
Static companies don't attract much talent, and incompetent people hire incompetent subordinates, and as the incompetence is gradually promoted within an organization, eventually most of the organization becomes incompetent. This is a first-order extension of the Peter Principle, which you should go look up if you haven't heard of it.
The fact that you can disbelieve Dilbert means that you have been very lucky indeed in your working life, and I hope you continue to have that kind of success.
The McJobs I've worked have always been frustrating in the sheer amount of work and attention they demand for miniscule pay. The stress of the high-tech realm, for me, is WAY more than compensated by good pay and benefites, and the ability to occasionally slack-off without someone glaring at me for not 'looking busy'.
Your management situation sounds fairly dismal, but your skills leave you with a ton of employment options. You're probably making enough cash to pay for your own training in whatever you desire, even if it's unfair that your manager sucks up whatever opportunities the company is willing to offer.
I'll never say that Scott Adams doesn't hit the nail on the head, tho'. He does! I just feel that I'm well enough rewarded that I can take those situations in stride.
Maybe you can set your boss up to embarrass the company for using pirated software and get his ass demoted. If it's really a government job, tho', good luck. The chairs in those jobs are covered with Crazy Glue!
Good luck, cheers and all that.
-k
**>>BELCH
The only food-service jobs I held (working dishwashing line in cafeteria, pot scrubber, fast-food grill cook) were WAY more stressful than technical writing at its worst.
"How many light bulbs does it take to change a person?" --BMcC-->
I think you're quite right, and that's precisely what Ciulla is saying..be aware that it's a choice, and a big one. As you are obviously aware, lots of people don't know they're making one.
jonkatz@slashdot.org
who said a lot of important things but few of them well. Ciulla isn't making a political argument, but a personal one. Not a fair comparison, I don't think. she's not calling for an end to the system, just for considering how to live well within it. And I think you're way overromanticing Marx..
jonkatz@slashdot.org
A lot of people love their work, and it means a lot to them. And communism killed off the work ethic almost wherever it went. I think the problem is corporatism, not capitalism. Technology binds people to work for longer hours, and corporatism has killed off the idea of work loyalty and company responsibility.
jonkatz@slashdot.org
People today believe that all Americans are exhausted, stressed, and dissatisfied with their jobs. But it's not true. When you poll people, as American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research did, you get a different story completely. 85% of the people polled were satisfied in their jobs. That's the same number as were happy in 1973. And 69% of people polled would take the same position again without hesitation. 75% of people polled were proud to be working for their employer. 70% of people polled are happy with their salary.
That doesn't sound like unhappiness to me. And I know *I'm* happy.
This
There used to be fantasies about technology making life easier with more leasure time. The problem is that any gains in productivity due to modern work go to upper level mgmt or one jerk in particular, while mgmt wants front line employees to keep on working just as hard as 19th century coal miners w/ 12hr shifts. It doesn't HAVE to be this way, if you can manage your own work. I've managed to keep a job down that doesn't pay grand sums, but keeps me comfortable, with lots of 'self guided' time during the 8hr day. My supervisor understands, just leave me alone and the computer network stays up. When he starts micromanaging and trying to squeeze more profits out, we start experiencing 'down time' and overall losses. Nice arrangement.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
That good life ended up when my boss grew tired of supporting 14 people in the company with his and my work...
Worked with a guy once in a shop with a few talented folks and a bunch of clueless incompetents (mostly former IBM big-iron programmers transplanted into a unix shop). My friend referred to the incompetents as "strap-ons". He'd say "Yeah, you get to work in the morning, strap on a couple, carry them all day, take 'em off before you go home."
--Jim
- Got in at 10/10:30
- My boss gets in at 11/11:30
- We go to lunch at 12:00
- We come back at work at 15:00
- Everyone leaves at 17:00
- We leave at around 20:30/21:00, having done the work of 1.5 days.
That good life ended up when my boss grew tired of supporting 14 people in the company with his and my work... He just slammed the door one day. You should have seen the other turkeys running around like freshly beheaded chickens...He fixes everybody else's problems that have been accumulating in the morning...
Then we go around in technical bookstores and libraries
My boss then fixes everybody else's problems that have been accumulating in the afternoon...
We start to REALLYwork.
--
Americans are bred for stupidity.
PERIOD.
--
Americans are bred for stupidity.
--
Americans are bred for stupidity.
The work ethic hasn't changed that much in the four centuries since the Europeans expelled the Puritans. Still feel like you have to spend most of your waking hours in work to fit in. This combined with short vacations, prudish cultural mores, and strong religious political parties, means things are pretty much the same- Just modernized into hi-tech slavery.
First, the US tax structure is such that is cheaper for corporations to push someone at 150% than to hire another worker (if they can be found). Overhead for benefits and facilities is about 100% and is about the same whether the employer works 30 hours a week or 80 hours a week.
Second, people constantly want to buy more stuff, whether it is due to greed or consumer brainwashing. Our basic house and car is 50% larger than a generation ago. There are a zillion more techno-gizmo "necessities".
I've had a lot of those shitty jobs and I'm glad to say I finally found a job that is great. I'll probably work here until I save up enough $$$ to start my own company. Between some of the places I've had to work and here I've seen the best and worst of the tech workplace and I know I work harder for this company than for companies that I couldn't stand getting up and going to in the morning.
:)
I'd say if you have a shitty job and your a geek then look for a new job and switch. Keep switching til you find a job you like. If a company can't keep workers they'll either eventually get the message or go out of business. Remember Real Genius -- When you're smart people need you.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
Hardly. The majority of the "right wingers" I know (including myself) think Dilbert is hilarious. Before you get off on a tangent, no, we're not amused at the pain of The Workers of The World. Dilbert is just plain funny, mostly because the situations in the comic are so freakin' unreal that it's impossible to imagine yourself putting up with them... but Dilbert, Alice and Wally do, day after day, and that ol' congnitive dissonance kicks in and you laught yourself silly because when all is said and done, no matter how bad things are, hell! - at least you're not one of those loosers!
"Great men are not always wise: neither do the aged understand judgement." Job 32:9
Too late.
I'd have to agree with you for the most part. In most of the corporations where I have worked easily 50% of what it is done is non-productive. Most places 25-50% of the employees could disappear without anyone noticing (mostly managers).
The problem is it is often very hard for a large organization to realize what is and is not 'non-productive' work. Sure, its easy to say after the fact that when a 80-man month project gets scraped it was a huge waste. But conditions change with time and a project that made sense when started might be counterproductive by the time it is completed.
What is easy to identify as waste work is the huge amount of time people spend in meetings and sending/answering emails. I want to see a company where the CEO decrees only 10% of your time max can be spent in meetings and you are limited to 20 internal emails a day (with a 5 person CC: max). That company's productivity would explode.
-josh
>>The space programs of both countries were governmental impositions on capitalism, and neither really produced useful technologies commensurate with the amount invested in them Um, I kinda take issue here with this point.
Space exploration has made SIGNIFICANT impact on all our lives. The list of spinoffs from "the space race" is huge and includes:
CAT scanners
MRI Machines
Dialysis machines
Cordless power tools
Water purification systems
Freeze dried foods
Infrared Cameras
Weather forecasts
Low cost long distance (Comm Sats)
GPS
Check out the Nasa Spinoff Database at http://www.sti.nasa.gov/tto/spinselect.html
Which is why I mentioned that there is a disparity in job to job comparisons, but when you look across all employed people there is a much, much greater disparity. I am theorizing that the reason for the overall disparity is life choices.
As for job to job disparity, I do find that fairly offensive. I am firm believer in equal pay for _equal_work_. Remember though, it's quality that counts, not quantity.
Maybe that's the biggest overall problem in the workaholic rat race - people confusing quantity with quality...
Chris
-- I need more coffee. It's Monday. There is no such thing as enough coffee on a Monday.
I consider myself lucky that the position I currently work in is a very flexible position. I can basically set my hours to what I need for a given day/week/month and no one complains as long as I meet my deadlines. My company allows me to take up to a two-hour lunch, during which I can go to the Doctor, run errands, etc. If I work more than 40-hours in a week, I can comp the time to use later instead of dipping into vacation time. The only thing I dislike is that my current employer lumps sick time and vacation time into one pool: Paid Time Off.
Don't get me wrong; I'm not trying to brag. I have friends at other companies that I have worked for who work long hours under draconian bosses. Four ex-coworkers regularly put in 80+ hour weeks and have an Dick for a boss. They don't get overtime or comp time, they only get paid salary, and they RARELY get to sit and eat lunch without being disturbed. They also are on pagers and cell phones 24/7/365.
Funny thing is, I find that many people choose the jobs they have as a result of the percieved "social status" that surrounds their job or who they work for. Examples: In many of the places I have worked programmers are considered to be lower in status than a sysadmin or you're better if you work for a hot, internet startup than if you work in an established company. My ex-coworkers are very status conscious and have bragged many times that they are the best LAN team in a major telecommunications company (Worldcom).
We met up the other day and got to talking about work. They have made it clear that they look down on what I do (AIX/Linux/Windows Administrator, Network Engineer, Jack-of-All-Trades) because of who I do it for (Lockheed Martin) and that I work in support of the military. They started comparing salaries and laughed when I revealed that my salary is about $10K less that theirs.
I had the last laugh though; I simply asked the question of how much they make per hour. One of them did some quick figuring and discovered that they made (on average) about $17.00/hour versus the $30+/hour that I make because my employer doesn't work me 80+ hours per week.
If "disco" means "I learn" in Latin, does "discothèque" mean "I learn technology"?
Since you clearly are not referring to the ancient Greek fellow who took it as a given that drudge work would always be done by slaves, could you tell us who this other one is?
/.
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
For once Katz may be right, far be it from me to say :). My uncle worked for just one company after he got out of the military. AT&T paid him good money to be a loyal engineer, and he was precisely that. He worked till he retired just a few years ago. He got a good pension having worked for just AT&T his whole career.
My father was the same story: he worked for the Santa Fe rail road for most of his working life, and retired not all that long ago during a resizing/early retirement package offer when the Santa Fe and the Southern Pacific were in merger talks.
But before my father retired, he worked about a dozen other jobs bouncing from one career to another right out of college. My understanding is that this was typical of my father and his friends: most of them didn't hold a stable job for years after college, and finally found a company to make their career at after bouncing around several other jobs.
I want to speak up on behalf of the book, not because I disagree with you, but because I concur. You're quite correct that it is a choice, but I still meet many people in the working world who don't seem to understand that, especially young people, especially men.
You comment that men seem more likely to choose "pay over lifestyle", and that fits my observation. But it seems to me that that itself is a product of our culture's sexism. Boys are raised to interalize values of material success, to see themselves as men only in so far as they make much money and wield power. That's vile! That's terribly inhumane: the value of no person is solely in their ability to make money or get promoted. That we still do this to our sons is evidence that there's still lots of work on eradicating sexism yet to do.
It's a good thing for young people, especially young men to question their values -- the ones they may not even realize they received and internalized as children.
There's nothing wrong with deciding that you want to commit yourself wholly to a project, a job, a company that you believe in -- if, in fact, you are making a decision. But there's everything wrong with employers using a young man's (or woman's) insecurity in his adulthood to manipulate him and to exploit him. The question is: are you working 60hr weeks because {you love what you're doing | you're meeting your personal financial goals | you believe in the worth of the project}... or are you doing it because you feel like you're not really a grownup if you don't, because you have a need to "prove something" and you don't even know to whom, because you have a subconscious contempt for anyone who doesn't try to win the rat race?
Young people hate asking that question of themselves, because merely humoring the question of whether or not one has been manipulated is so distasteful.
Anything which encourages young people entering the workforce to think about these issues is a good thing.
-*- Any technology indistinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced -*-
Why is that worrying, and why does it have to be "social" conditioning? Genetically, men are more predisposed to be hunters and providers, and women are more predisposed to be nurturers and caretakers. (Yes, these are generalizations. Yes, there are many exceptions.) The point is that you can't just disregard the effects of millions of years of evolution.
How to solve most of our problems: 1.Lots of nuclear plants. 2.Cure aging.
Well don't expect many of the posters to agree with you until they get older. Or disabled. Or one of their loved ones gets an illness their "plan" doens't cover any more - because they happened to age out of being so incredibly valuable.
The timing of this article is rather fortuitous. The Nobel Prize in Economics this year went to James J. Heckman and Daniel L. McFadden for their work studying how people make choices about where to live, what profession to pursue, how many hours to work, etc.
The net will not be what we demand, but what we make it. Build it well.
Talent, experience, a tight labor market, a location with a higher cost of living. Pick one or more and explain it yourself.
The net will not be what we demand, but what we make it. Build it well.
Most of my male friends faced with the same options look at the higher pay and jump on it.
The thing to keep in mind when people point out gender disparity is not that it is the disparity itself which is wrong; i.e. women don't just get paid less (although they often do), but also largly choose to be paid less for other reasons; but that it is the disparity which is a symptom of what is wrong.
If the claim is that men and women should in all respects be treated equally, something which may or may not be a realistic goal, then there should not only be no disparity in pay, but also no disparity in the choices made by 50% of the population. It is equally worrying to consider that women have been socially conditioned to think of the quality of their and their (possible) family's life as opposed to the level of pay that they get [which undoubtably also affects quality of life], as it is to consider that men are conditioned to neglect anything and everything in return for greater pay.
-Daniel
Contrary to popular belief, technology doesn't always solve worker woes.
Technology has allowed people to do far more work than their predicessors with far more accuracy. Unfortunately, this comes at a price.
Take McDonald's for instance. They came up with methods for putting out more hamburgers in minutes. What was the result of this? Did the workers at McDonald's suddenly have more free time because they were making more buggers faster and easier? Not really...it drew in more customers who wanted more fast burgers. This caused the owners to push the managers to keep up with the pace of sales which caused the manager to push the workers. It also slightly devauled the the worker. With new methods came a reduction in the skill set needed. Instead of requiring someone who half way knew something about cooking, you just need someone who can mechanically watch timers and move stuff around at the right time. You can't convince me that the average worker at McDonald is working in a stupid fashion any more than their predicessors.
The same thing happens in the high tech sector's of our economy. Someone comes up with a nifty way to increase productivity, the customers will want more, which in turn push the manager to drive the workers just as hard if not harder.
We almost all have the ability to choose what we do. Most people reading this posting can go to school or learn new skills. You can change your direction now or in the future.
Any complaints about where you are and what you are doing should be left at the door. Corporations are run by people, like you. At the least, if you are in a company, you are part of the system. You are "they" and you have some control. Really, you do. If you don't like that, or you think the system sucks, leave and start something yourself. Every day, every minute, you can make that decision.
Otherwise, welcome to the Borg. (Would you like Microsoft fries with that?)
- John
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
John S. Rhodes
WebWord.com -- Industrial Strength Usability
How to Download YouTube Videos
Paperwork gets done because of middlemanagement. Real work gets done in spite of it.
"The legitimate powers of government extend only to such acts as are injurious to others." Thomas Jefferson.
Damn right. I've decided to move transatlantic and so handed in my notice (on a friendly basis). My company has offered to make me a telecommuter, paying for my equipment and matching competetive local salaries (being higher in the USA than UK). I agreed. If you're worth recognition and you're not getting it them move jobs!
Rich
Wow, I think I want to go and sign up now. I can hardly resist the possibilty of having an excuse to land BG a good right hook to the nose :)
Rich
Bertrand Russel wrote a great esay on the topic called In Praise of Idleness (you can get rid of that stupid GeoCities javascript by getting to it via fly.to/russell).
The cure for 1933 is 1917.
Not really, in my experience. For the last year I've been working at a large blue company. Over the course of this time I was informally introduced by a co-worker to the Peter Principle, which is apparently a management model (or a model of management, depending on your flavor of cynicism).
I think the basic idea is this: in an organization, people tend to be promoted when they do their job well enough for a long enough period of time. Eventually, this will lead to some sort of managerial position. People will be promoted until they are no longer fit to be promoted by whatever standards are applicable. The problem lies therein: people are promoted until they are no longer fit to be promoted. This means that the positions that people achieve (and stagnate in) are those positions which they are simply not quite competent to hold.
This leads to a gradual accumulation of incompetent mid-level management, which (being to some degree incompentent) promotes more of the same. If your organization has some luck, the incompetency will level off at some point below the lead executive level, but that still means that there's a line of stupidity that must be crossed before anything of any real importance gets done.
You end up with a whole class of management that is interested solely in maintaining their position and appearing to make numbers appear to be in their favor... but not too much, because then additional responsibility comes along and the fact that they just don't know what they're doing is obvious to higher-level management, not just the people below them. In a worse scenario, upper management will knowingly keep these mid-level incompetents because they're not threatening.
It's a vicious cycle, and I'm not enjoying it terribly much.
[|]
Try explaining to your average Slashie sysadmins that they're a modern eqivalent of railroad brakemen or cotton gin operators, and should be organized accordingly. See what reaction you get.
We in the IT field, no matter where in the IT field you are, are in a very sticky spot. We are not exactly "white collar workers" because we get on our hands and knees, from time to time, and do hardware/cabling work. We're not exactly "blue collar workers" either because we code, create databases, solve application/user problems (PEBKAC, generally), and other varying intellectual aspects of the career we have chosen.
Where does this leave us? Somewhere in the middle. Will unions help? Yes and no. Yes because it will provide us with a united front, a basis on which we can say "Okay, this is where I am, I have X certifications, Y experience and Z outside knowledge." No because there are people out there that feel we are paid too much for not enough *enter variable here*, and most of all... People fear what they do not understand.
We are the people who know more than they do about things that are becoming more prevalant in their lives. The average person does not understand what we have come to learn through trial and error, through long nights of sheer curiousity and through months of dealing with the collective idiots of the world (for those of us who have ever been unlucky enough to pull tech support).
We are not artists. We are not intellectuals. We are not grease monkeys. What we are is a combination of the above, with a bit of curiousity, hunger and determination thrown in.
--Lise
We are the people our parents are terrified of... Until they want on call tech support.
I quit my last job bcos I didn't think it was going anywhere. It wasn't a very big company in itself, but it was a part of a very large corporation and as such had some real inertia to improvement and change, and some really bad corporate decisions coming down the tree.
:-)
:-) and are reading this, drop me a line - I'm working somewhere much better now!
Typical duff decisions, and I assure you these are all true:-
1) To start with, in spite of the fact that we all had PCs, all had WordPerfect (the company standard word-processor) and were mostly pretty fast on the keys, all specs had to be written in draft form and then given to the typists to retype into a template.
2) Eventually this stopped, and we were allowed to use WordPerfect for generating documents. However, storage (and retrieval and reprinting) of documents was paper hardcopies in filing cabinets, plus microfiches for archiving.
3) At some point, the notion of electronic storage hit management. But instead of keeping the electronic version of the document (at maybe 50-100K), they decided to print the document and then scan it in at 50dpi, single-bit! Text was just about readable, but diagrams were hosed, and the documents took up many times the space the would have done otherwise. Incidentally, they didn't (AFAIK) zip them up to reduce storage space either.
4) We stayed with WordPerfect. Of course we kept the DOS character-based version and didn't move to the WYSIWYG version, so all new hires cursed it and we couldn't read a lot of customers' documents. Eventually the global decision was taken to change to Word 6, so we did, breathed a sigh of relief, and then found that no-one had thought to upgrade the document templates, so we couldn't write specs in Word 6 for the next couple of months.
5) We used the Transputer as a platform for our work - a worthy chip in its time, but sadly past it even by when I started. No work was done on finding a new platform until Inmos decided they'd finally close down Transputer production, at which point all hell broke loose, and we had to order a mass shipment of Transputers to cover all jobs for the next 2 years. Incidentally, that also means that any old project is unmaintainable - BTW these are running the national grids in several countries (including the UK).
6) The classic, I'll save until last. After surviving a round of job cuts (25% of the ppl there), I decided to jump ship. In the meantime, the organisation had floated, and the company newsletters were talking about new management styles and improving employee relations, but none of us thought it'd happen. Anyway, the day I was leaving, I looked for my managers, to say goodbye and tidy up some loose ends. It turns out all the managers in the company were being sent on a course, and none of them had told the ppl working for them - they just didn't turn up that day! The kicker - the course was about improving communications in the company....
Is this ancient history? I'm afraid not. This all happened between 1994 and 1999.
Incidentally, if you are still there (you know who you are!
Grab.
Interviewers have asked me: "What do you consider the ideal job?".
I have always wanted to answer: "The one where I do nothing and get payed the entire Gross Domestic Product.". (or Gross International Product, if such a metric exists).
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
The other thing I find fucked up about many people is that they, in one way or another, live in utter terror of whatever society or community they belong to. There are less and less people willing to stand up for themselves or speak their mind. So many people are afraid of what will happen if they don't toe the line. Ugh. I can't live that way. I need the freedom to live my life as I choose.
That's why NT rules and Linux Sucks.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
A few years back after doing some 90 hour weeks working on a project, I stepped back and really thought about why I was working like that.
Since then, I've tried to keep the above saying in mind. I think it helps to think clearly about what you're doing - do you exist on this planet just to do your job, or is your job just a way to support your lifestyle, and allow you to enjoy other things?
Of course, there are grey areas, and it's nice to enjoy what you get paid to do, but I think it boils down to this. Life is short, and my time is limited. When you sell your time to someone else for money, you are selling a part of your life. So my point of view is, don't sell any more of it than you have to. There are lots more interesting things that you can do with it.
Although, if someone is willing to pay you to do something you truly enjoy, then the joke is on them.. ^_^
I love it. Man, you made my day. I know people who have their entire lives planned out - from the schools they attend to their job to their vacations, clothes, car, you name it. I have to ask - is that really living?
The other thing I find fucked up about many people is that they, in one way or another, live in utter terror of whatever society or community they belong to. There are less and less people willing to stand up for themselves or speak their mind. So many people are afraid of what will happen if they don't toe the line. Ugh. I can't live that way. I need the freedom to live my life as I choose.
My only worry is - what if the percentage of people who think for themselves becomes so small, that there becomes virtually no escape from the prying eyes of the government, of society in general, for those who can? Say it gets to the point where you can't shop in certain stores because you didn't go to the right school or something equally as egregious. If our society is headed toward being a borg-like collective, I'm heading for the hills.
I watch the sea.
I saw it on TV.
No, Thursday's out. How about never - is never good for you?
Criticism has torn up the imaginary flowers from the chain not so that man shall wear the unadorned, bleak chain but so that he will shake off the chain and pluck the living flower." What the hell was his point awful writer and you have just proven it. BTW the idea that Marx could not write his way out of a paper bag is held by very many very well educated people.
Cypherpunks: Civil Liberty Through Complex Mathematics. Those who live by the sword die by the arrow.
The point is: some corporations used to take care of their workers and that has stopped. Stock options replace salary. Telecommuting replaces vacation time. All of this is a change away from the simpler 40 hour weeks.
When I signed on with my company, the contract said 40 hours a week minimum. The company may call on you to do more than this. Now, I work an average of 52 hours a week. Hideous, but true. This was not the case for my father, nor his father. Funny how that works.
Have we evolved? Is it a good evolution?
So there I was. Naked. In a refrigerator. With a potroast on my knees. Smokin a cigar. That's when it got REALLY weird.
Having spoken with my uncle about this, they didn't force him to get married, tell him where to put his kids in school, when to do this, when to do that...None of that was there.
Exploiting the workers is not a new trend. Corporations only "take care" of their employees when times are good.
Corporations have the responsibility to keep their employees healthy. They provide the services that the corporations need in order to continue making money. Yes, that means a lower bottom line, but it means happy people and that's a good thing for the company.
and I escaped the destiny of becoming a corporate slave. Being forced to switch jobs, and to upgrade our skills is price we pay for escaping the fate corporations would otherwise choose for us. I still wouldn't go back. I am not a corporate slave. I am not some mindless cog in a large machine. How can you assume that if you're not a consultant you're a corporate peon? Have you learned nothing from the dot-com revolution? Consulting may provide the ability to change careers nearly seamlessly and a continuing education, but what downfall is there? That you'll be cut loose at the drop of a hat (possible as a consultant) that your product may be worthless (definite possibilty) and that you may be put out of work by someone who's hired permanently. There's even less security in consulting, and security is something, as a society we value.
So there I was. Naked. In a refrigerator. With a potroast on my knees. Smokin a cigar. That's when it got REALLY weird.
Up until the last four years, I was, on paper anyway, qualified to clean toilets or flip burgers. No colege education, not outstanding HS grades ect.. Bought some books, got my MCSE, MCP+I, and a 43k a year job. I was amazed at how EASY it was. Shure this job has more stress, worse hours, but it's worth every pain. better than getting yelled at for leaving the fries in too long
Dirty Pirate Hooker
Then why are you complaining?? still beats the shit out of fliping burgers. Fine.. You know unix.. is that stoping you from trying to get a better job? Working for a larger company? If you can't find a job you enjoy where you live, MOVE. I only mentioned MCSE 'cause that's where I'm at.
Dirty Pirate Hooker
Now, tell me to find another job? Most of the people I know in positions like mine are in the same boat around here. I'd like to know how far I'd have to move to find a technology related job that wasn't this worthless, but thus far haven't been pushed 'quite' far enough to work that hard at it.
Sounds like you found your own solution. "push" yourself into a better position. Go buy some books, get an MCSE or just a MCP, submit resumes, perfeably at a LARGER company that has more of an upward track and stop bitching about it. The only reason your in this position is 'cause you won't leave it.
Dirty Pirate Hooker
Life is good. I agree completely. No college degree, self educated MCSE making better than 40k a year, own my own house... 2 cars... The Midwest might be a technological black hole, but it's easy to find boundless opportunity. I thought about moving to Chicago, California,.. A bigger market of some kind, but the cost of living is outrageous compared to the increase in salary. I mean.. Where else can you get a house 2 blks from Lake Michigan for less than 100k? (Yes, it's a very good neighborhood) And no, we don't talk like dat der heh.. That's South Dakota.
Dirty Pirate Hooker
The space programs of both countries were governmental impositions on capitalism, and neither really produced useful technologies commensurate with the amount invested in them. The Soviet experiment simply shows how quickly a country can industrialise if it is prepared to sacrifice around 60 million lives; it doesn't show us anything about capitalism or socialism.
-- the most controversial site on the Web
I'm not expecting any reply from Jon, but in case anyone's tempted to believe him in this calumny, here's a favourite passage from Marx:
Awful writer? Like hell.-- the most controversial site on the Web
Company Press Release:
We are pleased to announce that we have currently hired a new Human Resources director that will help us create new productivity and higher profits. Lets all welcome Mr. Catbert.
Dilbert (n): see Office Space
- I don't care if they globalize against free speech. All my best free thoughts are done in my head.
Work longer hours for less
apparently Katz hasn't noticed the skyrocketing salaries of the past few years. Longer hours? Yes, someone can choose to work at a job where you work longer hours. On the other hand, I have plenty of friends who work 8:30-5 (with hour lunch) and never think about their job during off-hours.
And please explain to me why your company owes you one shred of "security". They are not your parents. If you are looking at anyone but yourself for your security, be it government or company, you are a fool. Unfortunately, people have been brainwashed since the new deal to think everybody owes them something.
--
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
I currently work for a government agency. For a few weeks in a row I can go without having more than an hour's work a day, then bang, I go a week where I'd need to put in 20 hours a day to keep up. In a perferct world, I'd have 8.5hrs of work to do a day, but I can handle having a few rough days and a few lax days. But literally 3 weeks of sitting on my ass doing nothing? Do you have any idea how long these days are?
Now I do admit that techies are fairly well paid. However, in the few jobs I've had, I can't just go to work for my ~8 hours a day and expect to be able to get any new job that pops up. I have to try and keep up with technology on my own time. Sure work helps with some things that we specifically use, but not with things coming up in the future, yet I'm supposed to have working knowledge of them when they show up on my desk and need to be installed ASAP.
Then there's the stress. In the last 1.5 years, I've taken about 6 days of for stress. I've snapped at people at work who had done nothing wrong to me because others don't do their work, and thus screw up the work I have to do. I complain about it and nothing gets done!
And you know the biggest problem I have with my job? My boss. I like most of my coworkers, but we got one of those techies that was promoted to management. Whoever hired him as a techie in the first place should be shot. He thinks he knows what he's doing, but doesn't. Then he forces me to install software that doesn't meet our needs, and when our clients complain, he just picks something else out of the air, even when I've done up pro's and con's for various packages. Instead of using his training budget to send himself on Managerial courses, he takes tech classes. We were offered a seat in a tech class for a product I support every day, but have had absolutely no training on. He takes the seat. He asks me to install warez'd software in a production environment. I confront him, he apologizes, and then we go back to the same thing.
Okay, the last bit was a rant, but let's face it, Scott Adams does hit the nail right on the head, and just because we get paid a bit more, doesn't mean we give up the right to a decent work environment!
I used to have principles when it came to work, but I spent way too much of my time out of a job. I'm sorry, but the choice nowadays is either you break some of your 'rules' or you don't fucking work. This is especially true in the midwest where the entire concept of 'good work ethic' means you should be willing to sacrifice absolutely everything that means anything to you for 'the business'.
I stick to my guns outside of work. But in order to keep my job I pretty much just bend over and walk in backwards. It's the only way to keep paying the bills.
Bite my yammer.
Oh, thank you oh great one for that highly insightful and truly biased opinion.
I am not going to give up all of my training and throw it away for an MCSE (I know Unix best, and believe me, the time I spent working for Windows based companies was even more of a pain in the ass than this job).
I've steadily moved into better and better positions believe it or not. And thus far this is the best I've found. It isn't perfect, but it beats the holy hell out of my previous jobs.
Bite my yammer.
Oh OK. Would I be wrong in the fact that my current job sucks? Or would I be wrong in the fact that the people I know all think their jobs suck?
As to small town life/quality of living: Personally, I have only one thing to say to that, "FUCK OFF!"
I lived in small towns most of my life. I now live in Sioux Falls, the largest small town in the world. 120,000 people and not one goddamned signed of civilization (unless you want to call that backwardass mall civilization). Everybody wants to be all friendly, but only if your willing to play the game of, "YOU WILL BE ASSIMILATED!"
Believe it or not, I don't like small town bullshit. Sure, neighbors are friendly as long as you go to church every week, carry your goddamned bible with you everywhere, and completely avoid having any personality at all. I've spent my fair share of time in Minneapolis/St. Paul and found the people up there to be far, far more friendly than the people around here if you don't 'fit in'. The reason? There's security in the slightly anonymous lifestyle up there. There is no way for them to get to know every detail of your life, so they can't badger you every second over your 'great mistakes'. In Sioux Falls, I get all the great ones. My nieghbors think I'm a satanic fuck because I play heavy metal guitar. I get badgered with bible thumpers at least once a week. I get told that I 'need' to come to every city event from the junior miss pig calling contest to the little league playoffs. I really couldn't care less.
Pardon my rant. But seeing people spout off about how great small town life is because they aren't comfortable just living without having to 'fit in' with the great idiot masses just pisses me off to no end. Add to that it's my birthday and people are acting like I'm some kind of faggot because I don't make a huge ordeal out of it and I think you can just start to understand why this 'know your nieghbor' small town bullshit gets under my skin.
Grow up. Small town spirit is for the weak minded. If you need it, great for you. But don't tell me I'm wrong just because I'm sick of putting up with the nosy idiots that think my life isn't my own. That's small town life. Get me the hell out of it!
Bite my yammer.
I'd kill for a boss that was willing to 'tolerate' my policies and ideas. I pretty much seem to always find myself in jobs where it's 'their way or the highway' and I have yet to find a job where I can really do what is necissary to make things run smooth.
But at least I finally found a company where I can run whatever software I want. That makes things a LOT easier than it ever was for me before. Now, if I could just find a way to convince them the Internet is not some big evil consipracy.
Bite my yammer.
Sure is nice there's so many amateur psychologists at slashdot.
Who's to say I'm not trying to get out? I'm always looking for work elsewhere. But the one problem I run into is the problem where 'it takes money to get anywhere'. Believe it or not, that is the truth.
So, I'm working at saving money, and I am going to find a way to get the fuck out of here. The midwest is a goddamned nightmare. I've lived in Iowa, Minnesota, and South Dakota. The only time I really enjoyed where I lived was the few months I spent in the metro area of Minnesota. The bigger the town, the easier it is to get along. And don't tell me I just haven't found the right small town. Having lived in five of them in various states, I'm quite sure I've had enough of a sampling. Bible thumpers make me sick, and that seems to be the majority of people in midwestern small towns.
I always wanted to live in California, but seeing as how my wife doesn't enjoy that idea, I probably won't end up there. But anywhere has got to be better than here. Actually, living in Fairmont Minnesota (a town of only 10,000) was a hell of a lot more enjoyable than Sioux Falls (a town of 120,000). It's just a matter of time. And in the meantime, like it or not, I'm gonna do some bitching. It's the only way to get through the day without slitting my wrists.
Or are all of you amteur psychoanalysts the type that believe you should just 'bottle up' everything? Yeah, that would pretty much describe midwestern philosophy. And people wonder why kids are shooting up schools.
Bite my yammer.
I've said it before and I'll say it again, the IT field would be much better off with unionization.
Paul Anderson
"I drank WHAT?!" -- Socrates
This isn't quite "Capital." I'm not sure which volume you read, but what I remember is first a really interesting (and unfortunately totally pedantic - but what do you expect from a German philosopher) exploration of money and value systems, leading to an exposition on production, the means of production, and how that all relates to labor (especially in relation to money and value above) and, above all, rent.
.10 back now.
What I vaguely remember (I wasn't reading for political content at the time) was that the "revolution" espoused by Marx was not a revolution as the term is described today; the revolution was the end result of capitalism, in the sense that "if capitalism goes down that path this is what will happen."
The basic question was "if scarcity doesn't exist then how does capitalism survive?" The answer was "it doesn't," at least not in its current form.
What I don't remember is how capitalism is defined in Marx's worldview, as at that time capitalism was not quite as it is today. While his ideas -were- enough to spark the 1848 revolutions, it's unclear to me what the deal was anymore; I suspect, but am not sure, that it was mainly the beginning of industrial dislocation brought on by the attack on the guild system and urbanization.
Let's face it - back then, large-scale capitalism wasn't the norm by far...and the bourgeoisie weren't the ones revolting, it was the poor. The poor can only revolt if there are enough of them around (in an agrarian society, the poor are too busy farming). But the poor, by definition, are inert until sparked. So who sparked them off? The people who could understand Marxism, of course! Those elite who either rejected their elite status or had some kind of grudge against the current order or wanted to grab the reins of power without going the Long Way.
Heck, in 1848 there weren't a lot of people who could spell, much less spell capitalism.
So where does this leave the above quote? In the land of "not quite accurate fantasyland." You can have your
--- only for the squeamish
My point is not that there aren't bad managers, but that managers don't need to have the technical skills of their underlings to effectively manage. The things you mention are
grievous managment errors, but the way to avoid that is not to have a manager who knows the differences between private inheritance in smalltalk and C++. That is the point I'm making.
I hear all the time people bitching and moaning that "their boss doesn't even know Perl" or whatever. I think that shows a real tunnel vision on the part of the technical worker.
A manager's skill set definitely does include being able to effectively place talent, how to estimate the scope of projects, etc. But that's a different ballgame than what the guy who is writing the actual code needs to know. The "He can't even declare a variable!" argument is totally unconvincing. "He can't estimate the scope of a project" is a real complaint. I've suffered plent of mismanagement as a tech guy myself, I know all about it. But I also get sick of the hollow complaints about the boss who doesn't spend time coding.
What are these machines?
Why is it that people forget that innovating demands time? Why is it that people forget that those on the new frontier of anything tend to have an obsessive-compulsive attitude toward their work? Why is it that people forget that what seems mundane and everyday yet constantly evolving (i.e., the principles of management) is done exceedingly well by only a select few?
We are compensated for our time by our salary. Those who do difficult jobs--tech, management, etc.--get the highest pay. Those who do difficult jobs often spend hours upon end at the job or doing work--business dinners, entertaining clients, etc.
I think tech people whine because not enough of them have been to college and tried to keep a job at the same time. See what that does for you. The real world seems easy after that...
--
-- Geof F. Morris
If workers in the technology or other knowledge field are being exploited, I'd argue it's probably their own fault, and that a shift in priorities is in order. Tech and knowledge workers are, often, talented people who have applied their energy to a pursuit of the things we associate with work - money, promotions, a sense of importance. If they shifted their viewpoint a little, and looked outside of the paid workforce for satisfaction and a better quality of life, maybe they'd be less inclined to fall into the 80-hour work week for little reward trap. I've sifted through dozens and dozens of these posts and not once do I see any reference to volunteerism. If work is exploitive, cut down the employers' opportunity to do so. Refuse extra hours, refuse weekend work. Refuse to cave to a value system diametrically opposed to your own. Spend that time in pursuit of more meaningful work - even if it is unpaid. Your local community association - you know, the one which works with the city on zoning, safety, crime, street dances, etc. - would probably love your help designing their page. Your church needs help communicating with the congregation. Someone needs to write stories for the volunteer community paper on what to look for in a back-to-school computer and software. Don't even apply your programming and coding talents to your volunteer activities. Search for satisfaction in other ways. Deliver meals-on-wheels. Point being, once you've made enough to put a roof over your head, clothes on your kids' backs, pay for repairs to the mini-van and save for retirement, you're done! You can find satisfying work in the tech field that lets you make a living, and leaves you time for the truly important things in life, like helping others and giving in to your urge to be generous. Get off the ego trip, and realize that technology hasn't created the conditions for exploitation - greed has, and it always will.
...please feel free to email me, and I will send you some information on my company. We're hiring, and while this place is by no means perfect, it's a small-to-medium sized company, quite successful and not very Dilbert-like.
We make software development tools, and by an odd coincidence, many people on the marketing side are former coders. The company was started by 1 geek, and 1 geek-gone-business-side. We're looking for mostly Java, some C++, some mobility, etc. The company is in Toronto, Canada.
I can spell. I just can't type.
Basically all but 10% of the population are not people - they are just sheep - sheeple as I call them. They just believe everything on TV, have no skepticism, have no creativity. Perform their anti-work, go home, sit in front of the TV for the next few hours, then follow the talking head on TV like a herd of sheep. Scared like a herd of sheep.
Actually, I gave up TV long ago. There just isn't anything worth watching (especially the news which is so laughably inaccurate and trivial). Nobody will even take any personal risk any more. Now I don't mind if others don't want to take a bit of personal risk, but what I really object to is them telling me I shouldn't do it either or in even worse cases - petitioning the government to enact legislation to prevent me from doing it because "they know best". I just wish they'd go and bugger off.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
However, in the company I work for, and I suspect in many smaller companies - it is nearly impossible for a manager to not have an understanding of the time required to write software and build hardware.
In my experience, the techies who complain the most and loudest are the ones who are high on their own technical talent and are under the mistaken notion that hacking kernel code means they're smart enough to make intelligent business decisions.
The truly excellent managers and techies are the ones who, at the very least, understand there are things they each don't know and must trust the other to provide accurate data and/or decisions.
I don't think that's too idyllic.
Ciulla isn't explaining anything Office Space hasn't addressed. Funny thing is this lady teaches at Harvard, while Office Space was made by the creator of Beavis and Butthead. Oh the irony.
Used to be that companies took care of their employees,
It should be noted that "taking care" of their employees often included deciding lifestyle choices for their employees. Like deciding whether or not an employee could get married. How to dress. Etc.
now it's part of their bottom line to screw them over (working more hours for less) and try and get them paid less with less benefits.
Exploiting the workers is not a new trend. Corporations only "take care" of their employees when times are good.
Enter the independent contractors who work for less and don't need benefits, the modern mercenaries.
I was one of the first of these "mercenaries" in the late 80s. It put me through school, and I escaped the destiny of becoming a corporate slave. Being forced to switch jobs, and to upgrade our skills is price we pay for escaping the fate corporations would otherwise choose for us. I still wouldn't go back.
Regardless, companies will always need full-time employees. Freelancers cannot replace full-time workers. It does, however, level the playing field for skilled peple who don't necessarily "know the right people" or have some worthless piece of paper degree, or want to sign away their life to a corporation. It does make life tougher for those who would prefer to be allowed to stagnate.
Instead of caring for our workforce, we make them compete against each other.
This is not a new phenomenon. You obviously didn't work through the recession of the late 80s/early 90s. It was far worse then. The difference is that now everyone and their half-simian brother is a so-called "I.T. expert" nowadays.
Not sure about this as a summary of Capital. As I remember, the key to it was Marx' brand of the labour theory of value, and that isn't mentioned here. Still, I've thought for a while that Marx is becoming more and not less relevant to our current economy (and one doesn't need to be a socialist to think that).
Actually it's not. My manager's only claim to fame is that he was good at configuring routers and was an excellent BSer. That's how he got where he is today. If asked to help on any other type of problem he'll do what he does best, reconfigure the router. It's all he really knows.
2 months ago, one of our top techs, Dan, told him he was tired of the long hours, low pay and lack of respect. The manager told him to either "suck it in or get out." So Dan went out and got another job.
3 weeks later when we were having some perplexing network problems the manager came into the room and started yelling about why wasn't this fixed yet and who the person was who's supposed to be responsible for it. We told him it was Dan's responsibility but that he had quit and hadn't been replaced. Our manager's answer? "Page him and get him back in here, NOW!" (Dan moved several hundred miles away and his pager sits on his old desk.) When we tried to explain that wasn't possible our 'genius' manager just waved his hand and said "I don't want to hear excuses, I only want to hear results." (One of his favorite phrases.)
One of the software developers told him that if he wants Dan back, HE should be the one calling him up and kissing Dan's ass, not us. He's now an ex-developer for us (fired on the spot).
We did finally get the system back up, but it took all day. And no, neither Dan nor the software developer have been replaced yet and we're still falling behind schedule for some reason.
As for me, my resume's in the mail.
If Dilbert had no bearing on reality, no one would be able to relate to it. It's nothing new, the Peter Principle covered the same issues (incompetency, stupidity, etc.) a LONG time ago.
"Under capitalism, fantastic new technologies are developed. A capitalist economy is the *only* kind of system that can produce such technical advances."
Oh yes: the capitalist economy in the Soviet Union gave it the technology edge so that they were first into space and the only country with a permanently manned space station. Getting to the moon was just an attempt by the US not to lose face completely.
I would suggest that war leads to greater technological advances than capitalism. But then, it's hardly a sensible solution.
Sometimes I have to wonder about people whining about low salaries and to much time at work who are living in San Francisco, or any one of 100 places. I think this is a major element not included in so many complaints. No one is requiring you to live in New York, or Chicago, or San Francisco, or LA. Part of the sacrifice that you undertake when living in one of these places is being paid next to nothing, with an incredibly high cost of living, and working over time like hours. Don't like what I describe??? Move to the midwest, or the south, or to a smaller city. I am paid what I consider to be pretty reasonable for my education level and experience, and the type of person I am. And I recently found out that I am making easily 2x as much as my friends out west, I live in a city with half the cost of living, and I am making over the average income of a family of 4 in my same city. I am 23 with 4 years of Internet related programming experience and a 4 year college degree in economics, and yet I only work an average of 42 hours a week. The technological revolution doesn't mean you can have your cake and eat it to, it just means it won't be so hard to cut.
Funny and I thought Perl == Paid employment recently located
What's the news here? I didn't move to the valley because I like paying $2500/month in rent. I plan to move out in a few years to somewhere I can afford to live.
These are all about balance of choices. The better paying (remember risk/reward?) and more challenging jobs generally require more dedication.
People complain about the gender wage gap. There are genuine problems here with pay disparity, but a significant percentage is probably based on life choices.
Most of my female friends when faced with a choice between high pay and long hours versus reasonable pay and reasonable hours make a life choice decision towards a reasonable job (40-45 hours/week).
Most of my male friends faced with the same options look at the higher pay and jump on it.
There are no absolutes and all men and women are different. I am suggesting that, in general, men prefer pay over lifestyle, women prefer lifestyle over pay. The cynic would say that men still think that money can buy lifestyle.
So make your choice... just understand that you do have a choice.
Chris
-- I need more coffee. It's Monday. There is no such thing as enough coffee on a Monday.
Believe it or not they don't teach "how to screw your employees" in business school. In fact they teach us just the opposite, alot of the examples Katz cited in his article are very close to examples used in class to illustrate how NOT to manage. A little background, I am a senior going for my BBA in Management at UAA. One of the reasons I chose managment over cios/mis programs was simply because I didn't think (and still don't) that many managers understand geeks at all. And just as bad most geeks don't know, and don't want to know, jack shit about running a business, hence many startups have shitty shitty management. It's from that shitty management that you get the 18 hour days, high turnovers and the lay-off and outsource mentality. Here's an interesting tidbit for ya'll: loosing and replacing one "normal" employee costs the company roughly 4 times that persons salary for the time it takes to replace them (ie if it takes a month to replace them it costs 4 months salary in hiring costs, lost work etc...) for a tech worker I've heard it being as high as 10 times salary for replacement. High turnover is bad M'kay? Believe me, trained competent employees are any company's most valuable assets.
;->
Ok so why is there so much shitty managment and boneheaded HR moves then? I have a theory, at least for the technology sector. Most professional managers, good or bad, don't have an understanding of the geek subculture, they don't know how to motivate us and keep us happy. At first they fall back on what works for "norms" standard bennie packages, bizzare sports related pep talks, lame incentive programs, and finally in frustration slip either into a comatose state where they make no decisions and play solitare all day or become fire breathing assholes who drive off all the best workers. On the other side you get some very talented geek types that start their own business, they can code like the devil but know nothing of running a business. Maybe they do well at first when it's just a small group of friends sweating out all nighters together to get the first product out the door. The success begins to take it's toll, and these very talented programmers find themselves at the helm of a company with 50 other employees. Some turn out to be natural leaders, like Linus for example, who can herd cats and get a job done, others find they can't do it and fall back to coding. So instead of delegating specific tasks out to the staff the founders are still pulling all nighters working in one direction while the other employees are following suit by pulling all nighters working on what they think the company needs. Opps. Then they get frustrated and quit.
Anyway that's just my take on it. Sadly I havn't encountered any other full-fledged geeks in the management program here, but on the bright side alot of the other younger managment majors seem to at least understand that geek types have different motivations that other employees will and will hopefully do a better job than the current generation of management in the tech field.
Incidently I graduate in May if anyone has a PHB they want to replace
"Listen: We are here on Earth to fart around. Don't let anybody tell you any different!" - Kurt Vonnegut
REPLACE television WITH coding
REPLACE reading a book WITH writing a book
REPLACE talking WITH consulting
REPLACE playing games WITH writing games
REPLACE listening to music WITH playing music
...
People can leave their day jobs by being active and productive. Absorbing content, such as reading this post, is important. But, it won't get you rich and it won't spread your name around. By posting, for example, you build your reputation and name recognition. The transfer of energy becomes in>>out versus out>>in. There is no magic to this. Produce and build value. Turn value into dollars. Quit your day job. Or, continue to consume, and ultimately feed the producers.
- John
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
John S. Rhodes
WebWord.com -- Industrial Strength Usability
How to Download YouTube Videos
At my latest job, I get in at roughly 9:15 (my fiancee works a half mile from home, but has to be in at 9, so I drop her off there and then go in to work. Today I got in at 10:00 and no one blinked an eye. My uniform is a t-shirt and shorts. And I get to PROGRAM IN PHP ALL DAY!!
I'll take this over McJob any day of the week, thank you very much.
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
This article is pretty important for those of you fantasizing about a job in corporate America (as anyone that actually does work instead of managing to do nothing).
The world has changed radically with the explosion of the Internet. Information which was once hard to find is now harder to find, but easier to look up. (Search engines and spider engines help somewhat.)
Now, with the exponential growth of computers in in EVERY aspect of corporate life, the white-collar world is changing the same way the blue-collar world changed in the 1970's with the introduction of robotics to assembly lines, and automation in lower-eschelon tasks.
It used to be that computers were something of a novelty except for number-crunching. Desktops were word processors and Rolodexes with Solitaire. Big iron was written in COBOL to figure out the numbers so the shareholders would look and say, Gee, the company made a profit this term, good job, keep it up, and I'll buy ten thousand more shares.
Now, everything is computerized. Accountants use spreadsheets and overglorified adding tapes for the books. The media uses computers to help shape the images on the screen, the words on the page, the pictures in the two-page spread. Managers can type their own memos and torture their departments with OneOS mentality (Aka You use Vin-dose!)
The corporate towers are changing. Cat5 is required in every office. The jobs of today will be gone or radically altered in less than a decade, some estimates say in as little as 5 years. 95% of the jobs will be different or gone. (The other 5% is the Top Escelon Positions, the CxO's VP's and Presidents and Chairs of the Board.)
Here endeth the lesson.
I used to be someone else. Now I'm someone better.
Real life is underrated.
You are *very* lucky to work in a place where Dilbert is not the truth. Most of us are stuck in a place where Dilbert is the truth. It is not even a lack of tech knowledge by managers that is the bad thing. If they could admit that they don't know it tell us what needs to be done and then let us do it it would be good. The problem is when they try to tell us how to do it and because they are not technical they are wrong. Best boss I ever had did not know a thing about tech. But he also knew he did not know and therefore gave me the tools I need to do my job and got out of my way. The idiots are the ones who can't admit that they don't know anything and try to micromanage everything. And there are alot of those.
Cypherpunks: Civil Liberty Through Complex Mathematics. Those who live by the sword die by the arrow.
In many, if not most companies, executive management is much like a social club (usually a Boys' Club). Ability and intelligence is not irrelevant, but the selection of executives may have more to do with the personal comfort of peers than anything else. Will you be politically reliable? Will you identify completely with "the club" and not your own subordinates? Are you good company on the golf course? Are you someone who the other execs will enjoy hanging with? Are you likely to represent a threat to them or their status in some way?
Back in the 80s I was the software VP for a small company that developed scientific software and systems, mostly because I was the technical cofounder. After a while I found myself in the position of being the only one in management with any computer or science background whatsoever, and believe me, it was no picnic. I was sensitive to the situation at the time, but in retrospect there's probably nothing I could have done about it; I was identified more as "one of them" than "one of us", and it was only a matter of time before I was forced out, to be eventually replaced by a manager who had no sci/tech background and therefore would not be a threat to management cohesiveness. I could get all self-righteous about it, but to be honest I don't remember hiring many people either with whom I felt threatened or uncomfortable. That's how you end up with technology companies run by managers who are clueless about what they are managing.
BTW, after that I was completely disillusioned with corporate politics and started my own company. Things went well for a while but it ultimately failed, largely because I spent nearly all my time on technology matters and gave short shrift to things like raising capital and building a sales and marketing apparatus. But just wait 'till next time...
You've never actually had a job at a company like those described in Dilbert, have you? You've never actually read Scott Adams, except for the occasional laugh at a comic strip, have you? One must realize that Dilbert is humorous because it is an exaggeration, but it is not a pure invention. Most of the story ideas come from people who work for those large companies, or from Adams' own time as a telco employee. In fact, if you go to the Dilbert website, there is a stock index page where one index is built on the prices of the stocks of companies from which Mr. Adams says he has gotten the most ideas. Incompetence is mostly irrelevant because life is not that fragile when viewed en masse (greenhouse effect and associated theories notwithstanding). Getting up in the morning, eating, getting dressed (and I would have to argue that some are barely able to do this), moving around the planet, working in jobs that rarely require the same brainpower that it took to get past fourth grade, reproducing... these do not require an incredible amount of competence. In fact, all it takes is a few smart people to set up systems, plans, policies, and organizations, and you've got something running which will largely perpetuate itself as long as no one actually stops to question it too much, or try to change it drastically. This is not to suggest that everyone, especially bosses are morons or incompetent. But in any group, most of the people are downright average.
I do not have a signature
I dunno - I just got an email that is offering me $50,000 / week working part time at home. Hey, I can't wait to get started!
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
Nonsense. People work longer hours due to stupidity not technology. They need to work longer because they're not doing anything useful anymore - they're sitting in meetings discussing mission statements or ISO9000 compliance tests or a million other worthless activities. Dilbert is entirely accurate. The more extreme useless people use technology to generate anti-work more efficiently than ever before, but the root cause is addiction to ritual, not technology (www.reciprocality.org). In fact it's only technology that prevents the whole edifice from disintegrating and snapping people out of their stupors through economic collapse and eventual starvation. Left to their own devices the majority of humnity will slump into an eternal ritual where every moment of their lives is entirely predictable from the greetings that their co-workers give as they walk into the office to the format, outcomes and even dialog of their favorite shows. As it is, the economic surplus provided by increasing mechanisation nicely matches the increasing stupidity and worthlessness of humanity. We're already living in a post-scarcity world (in the west at least), the wheels would keep turning just fine if only 10% of the population worked. People don't want more leisure time though, they want to keep their minds in a state of minimum utilization, so everyone spends more time at work performing pointless rituals and spends the rest of their lives watching predicatable television. Anything unpredictable must be destoyed - such as children who don't follow the rules - that's OK though, there are drugs to cure that (ritalin).
And here endeth the rant, for today anyway.
http://rareformnewmedia.com/
I've always thought that most so-called knowledge workers have about 4 or 5 hours of good concentration in them each day. The rest is spent farting about, not out of laziness, but because you need the social stimulation and distraction for your own well-being and to let your unconscious mind process stuff.
:-)
If you read books on software engineering (Mythical Man Month, Peopleware, Death March Projects) you'll see that the more people work, the less benefit to the company in terms of output there is - more than 1 60 hour week in a row, and you'll be LESS productive than you used to be with 40.
So most overtime, or early arrival and late departure, is in fact symbolic: it acheives nothing for the company. It only proves the devotion of the worker to the company. Worker devotion is not a tradable asset
Everybody recognises this, but no one seems to be able to do anything about it. (Just as managers will sagely nod when someone says "adding more programmers will make a late project later", and then go ahead and put more on anyway.)
The best thing that the young and nerdy audience of Slashdot could do is excercise its collective discretion not to work stupid hours for little benefit. (See http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/1/13813.html for another "High tech labour is scarce" story). Refuse to worship at the altar of the company: take a rational attitude to your life. Unless it's enormous fun, in which case knock yourself out.
I hate this sort of drivel about how things are 'especially difficult' for tech workers. Bull SH*T! Try spending 10-15 years in almost any NON technical career (except, perhaps, for lawyers and psychologists) to get up to 40 or 50 thou a year, and then try to stomach the sniveling of the 'poor techie' who gets 40-50 grand on his first, entry-level position!
I'm on the Hi-Tek Gravy Train and I'm NOT COMPLAINING! My job is blast compared to pretty much anything else I've done.
Try working at McJob for 7 or 8 bux an hour, with a trashy boss who fumes and threatens whenever you're 5 minutes late. There's plenty of folks who, for a variety of reasons, HAVE to rely on those jobs to survive, and have to say 'yes sir' to all the crap that gets thrown about them.
Nobody writes books or articles about THEM because they're not a good market. They don't make enough to buy books in the first place.
We 'poor techies' are a great market; trumpet one of our pet concerns on the cover of a hastily-thrown-together book or article and maybe now you'll cash in! Them techies got money and them techies buy books!
**>>BELCH
The problem with managers is not the fact that they don't hack the kernel, or can't even log into the network, but it's the fact that because they have NO idea what the people they're managing do, they make stupid management decisions.
:)
They give the upper management promises that are near impossible to keep, they take away budgets that are definately needed, they move people to where they don't belong (like moving your FreeBSD web site admin to administrating the NT servers, or taking a rookie VisualBasic programmer and trying to make him configure a Cisco router).. and because of things like that, the workplace becomes unorganized, hecktic, and even hellish.
Of course the REAL problem is not so much that the middle managers don't know what they're dealing with, but that they don't listen to their employees who are trying to politely(at least one would hope) show them what they're doing wrong.
They're so concerned about their advancement, and their newfound power, that they don't care if they're screwing over employees, or even the company itself... and those types of managers are bad.
In any case, if I just re-stated what Katz said, ignore me. I don't like reading Katz articles, just the comments.
The reason Dilbert is so funny is because it's true. I'd rather read that then a boring tome of how work sucks.
Yes, it's true. I worked at Microsoft for 2 years and left recently. And guess what? They don't put up with this Dilbertesque Crap. Why? Because the damn place was founded by a PROGRAMMER. I have met BillG and he convinced me that he is a programmer (please put your snickers aside. The MBAs who work at Microsoft work for a programmer, and everyone in my large group (500+ people) doesn't ever have to report to an MBA. Programmers rule the place. It's got it's downside too, but it is like paradise in many ways.
The only way you can advance at Microsoft (at least in my groups) is that if your team agrees you would be a good leader. Nepotism is shot down pretty fast. So, look at www.microsoft.com/jobs. Go up for an interview. I've heard things are changing, and I left because of the current DOJ problems to go to a startup, but it does have a nonbullshit feel to the place. It values results and results only. --BlueRain
No,
People invent things like Dilbert to caricature the following
I write database driven websites for a living, including e-commerce.
My boss does not know how to write website or database code.
My boss does not understand what the difference between http and https is and which should be used where.
My boss does not know what sorts of functions are done on the website side of things and what sort of things are done by the database
My boss does not understand what a database is for.
My boss has heard of Internet Explorer and Netscape but is incapable of installing them without my help.
My boss believes that the password field in a HTML form prevents anyone from intercepting your password.
My boss believes that if they change the password on the intranet administration website that the database developers will no longer be able to access and change their information without permission.
My boss does not realise that you must be connected to the internet to access a website.
My boss gets confused when his laptop stops working after a few hours, especially as I can fix it by plugging it in.
My boss believes that his first name is a great password for the company systems, it helps him to remember it (as does the post it note on his monitor).
My boss provides the client with an accurate estimate of how long a project will take and how much it will cost *without* consulting me - afterall my boss must know better than me - otherwise he wouldn't be my boss.
Now do you see why I have little confidence in my boss. The only reason that any money is made is because my boss multiplies the number of paragraphs in the specification by ten and quotes for that many hours, shows it to me for about ten seconds and if I don't yelp sends it to the client, afterall we must be a forward looking proactively leveraged organisation.
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former. (Einstein)
I've just entered the employment market in May and I'm already on my second job. Granted I like this one and will stick with it for a while, but I can't see myself working for just one company in my life. Used to be that companies took care of their employees, now it's part of their bottom line to screw them over (working more hours for less) and try and get them paid less with less benefits. Enter the independent contractors who work for less and don't need benefits, the modern mercenaries.
Instead of caring for our workforce, we make them compete against each other. No longer are we a goal-oriented work structure, everyone has their own agenda, fighting back and forth to gain points with the pointy-haired ones who operate on a separate plane of existence from the very real one that dominates the real office.
It seems like there are more people who focus of cohesing (is that a word?) teamwork than actually do any work. Take for example this guy I work with. He is a fantastic teacher, but not the best manager. He works too hard at managing, setting too many rules, too many requirements of his fellow teachers. When we try too hard, no one succeeds.
So there I was. Naked. In a refrigerator. With a potroast on my knees. Smokin a cigar. That's when it got REALLY weird.