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Vive La Loafing!
theodp writes "Bonjour Paresse, an anti-corporation slacker manifesto whose title translates as 'Hello Laziness,' has become a national best seller in France and made a countercultural heroine of its author, who encourages workers to adopt her strategy of calculated loafing in response to dimming prospects of success for rank-and-file employees. Could a translation find a Silicon Valley audience?"
Let the weenies that hate their work slack away. When the annual review comes up the people that take pride or work hard will move ahead. Then the weenies will bitch about not being liked, etc. ANYTHING but looking in the mirror and taking responsibility for their place on the ladder.
Trolling is a art,
This mostly pertains to France, which is similar to other European countries whereby employees stay at one job, for life, and very rarely get fired.
I think US citizens should focus on different things, like getting 3 or 4 weeks of vacation per year, not just two.
Also, some professions are not equal in the USA. Medical residents, for example, are under the same employee laws as everyone else, but routinely work 100 to 120 hours per week. Only *now* are they starting to get tired of it and fight back.
Good for them, because that kind of thing is outrageous and needs to change.
Instead of focusing on "Bonjour Paresse", people should focus on working to live, not living to work. Or, how to be a good employee and not slack off, bringing down the system.
And give businesses more excuses to outsource.
If you are so worried about the dead-end/exiting nature of the lower/middle jobs, start kissing major butt to move into managment.
Or maybe start your own business doing something you are interested in.
And if you still think loafing is the way to go, please do not procreate.
Let's see, you read this, you get like 1-2 months off every year, then you piss-and-moan about Americans being more successful.
So a French author advocates not doing the task in front of you; merely give that so-expressive French shrug with the palms upward. I guess this explains all the French military victories. Merely look like you're fighting a war, don't overdo it! Also: "Given the difficulty of firing employees, she says, frustrated superiors are more likely to move such subversive workers up than out." Let me just say right here that France has got to be quite different from America in this aspect. The firing process in America is a smooth, well-oiled and often-used machine.
Seems like a self fulfilling prophecy, but French socialists are the first to complain when the little guy actually gets a piece of the action from a company instead of the State.
The fact is that in Europe tech employees don't benefit as much from options etc whether at startups or larger corporations. The typical reaction however is not to expect better rewards or demand a piece of the pie (with the corporate tax incentives that are required to encourage it) but to tax the hide off profitable corporations and wealthy individuals a.k.a. "fat cats". There are no angel investors in Europe and almost no engineer level guys who made it rich in the rank & file who are then able to comfortably start their own business.
The typical small business starts out there with one or two guys, no cash (or a bank loan taken against your house) and maybe a grant from the EU or some development commission.
...as about half the French corporate workforce is on vacation right now. Probably not the best season to try to advise them.
Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
I would prefer not to.
You have to remember, back in the 50's and 60's the automotive industry had a LOT of capital tied up in foundries, assembly lines, parts plants and logistics. I hail from the former heart of GM, Ford and Chrysler where cities grew with the fortunes of these companies and saw first hand the stranglehold the unionized workforce had on this investment. With nowhere else to go for labor (a strike would idle their lines and the competitors would reap those lost sales, and damn few would cross a picket line in a company town) and much of their investment located where the attitudes were complacent, GM, Ford, Chrysler and AMC were sitting ducks for the japanese automakers. The pendulum has swung very far to the other side, now as the companies have considerable strength in negotations (don't ratify the agreement, we'll move to Mexico or China)
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
If you'd bother to read the (very short) article at all, you'd know that actually part of the reason she proposes slacking is in fact to get ahead!
It's very dependant on the French business climate, but basically she says that since you have no chance to advance through good work (becaue the system is very rigid and based on tenure or diplomas), instead slack off in ways that few people notice - since the system makes it almost impossible (or very unlikley) to fire you, a boss will more likley move you up somewhere else than try to deal with you!
Now for an American slant - could you please let us all know where you work where your review determines how much you move forward? I have had a great carreer but any movements up have been more about me forcing the issue than being moved up because of good reviews. And I've seen plenty of people move up the ladder without good reviews to back them. Reviews, and pandering to them, are possibly the most pointless waste of time ever invented by humanity.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
How could I practice calculated slacking and still respect myself?
-Rich
So a Frenchwoman, an economic adviser to the electricity industry no less, does something similar and it's:
- Jokes about the French (rather than useless management) on
/. - A disciplinary hearing.
My conclusion: We're all much the same. And my other conclusion: I hope she makes as much money as Scott Adams. It would go some way to show there is some kind of justice in the world.Panurge has posted for the last time. Thanks for the positive moderations.
Slacking must be principled. If you have a pointless job and are going nowhere, ok, slack. On the other hand, if you have a white collar job that allows you to sit in a padded adjustible height chair and browse the internet, you are probably already better off than the vast majority of humanity. It means that some other chump has to pick up the slack because you decide to take out your ennui about the dismal nihilism of life in your workplace instead of confining such gestures to solitary binge drinking on weekends, like the rest of us schmoes do.
And if you are going to slack, slack productively! Become an activist or a political grafitti artist or something so the rest of us slobs have something amusing to look out on through our windows.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
The French drink more, smoke more and do less than most Westerners. Yet they are third in the WHO rankings for life expectancy behind Japan and Australia while the United States languishes in 24th place. All I can say is that the French must be doing something right.
Americans work harder for longer hours, get paid more but die earlier. The French work less hours, get more holidays and live longer. So who is really the most successful?
For all intensive porpoises your a bunch of rediculous loosers
well.. that's just because they grew up and stopped the method used earlier in breaking labour unions: just killing the bosses and bullying the rest.
(now, how that differs from the soviet union way I honestly don't know)
anyways.. don't do low value jobs and expect to be paid highly.
I believe the goal here is to show bosses that giving the fruits of their workforces labors to the workforce and not to investors or themselves is the key to success. Infact, it is the key to making a capitalistic society go round. Unfortunatly, a corporation exists for the enrichment of investors, workers be damned unless they own voting stock. The workers revolt by working based on their pay; if they're paid minimum wage to stock shelves, they work slow and slack off. If they're paid $8 or $10 to stock shelves, then they work hard.
Candy-Coated Knowledge
Michael Moore is actually from a wealthy suburb of Flint. He never lived in Flint itself, and was a line worker for all of one day before deciding he didn't care for it and quit.
regarding the epic scale slacking which contributed to the ills of the automotive industry
While the hairpieces in middle management heroically toiled late into the night to keep the business afloat, no doubt.
Funny how the slightest voice in support of workers generates a response of "they're just a bunch of lazy bastards who want more money for less work" along with the obligatory "they're all in unions too."
The article makes a very important point: that the possibility of success in the average corporate job is zero. That much is quite beyond dispute.
Now, let's all sing the company song.
Business isn't willing to pay for products, innovation and careers, so we get brands, mortgage commercials and layoffs.
"Avoid employing unlucky people - throw half of the pile of CVs in the bin without reading them." -- David Brent
You have to remember, back in the 50's and 60's the automotive industry had a LOT of capital tied up in foundries, assembly lines, parts plants and logistics.
Yeah. A lot of people had real jobs then too, and could afford a house before they started applying for Medicare. Funny how that works, isn't it?
Business isn't willing to pay for products, innovation and careers, so we get brands, mortgage commercials and layoffs.
I'm not going to pay thousands more for a car that will break down sooner. American auto has not recovered because many of the improvments in manufacturing have been fought by the unions. Most of the processes that increase quality also increase efficancy. If the line is more efficient then you don't need as many workers. The unions have fought everthing that reduces the numbers of workers needed.
The purpose of language is communication, If the idea is clear the grammar ain't important
work as hard as **you** think you are being paid to work.
Hooray for the bare minimum and mediocracy!
Eventually "white collar" workers will realize that unions are the only way to resist. Until then "take stuff from work"--read Guy Debord and the situationalists--and work as hard as **you** think you are being paid to work.
You are wrong, and I tell you why.
Blue collar workers, are in essence, human machines. They do a thing or a limited set of things, and that's about it. If they aren't at work that particular day, a different person needs to do the same thing in the same way.
White collar workers do not do a limited set of things. If a white collar worker is not at work on a given day, it is likely that the things he or she needed to do are delayed until he or she returns.
A lot of tech people wrongly believed they were white collar due to either (1) their pay or (2) a false sense of pride. The jobs that have been shipped off to India and the rest of the world have been by and large blue collar jobs.
White collar workers in the realest sense have a much bigger chip to bargin with than the true-blue collar workers. Their skill.
For example, I am skilled programmer, writing on average two to three useful programs a week. Replacing me is expensive due to the learning curve to get up to speed in our specific tailored circumstance. A person in a foreign country/timezone would have trouble with doing my job because it requires close heavy interaction with customers and other workers on site.
When you sum the value I add to the cost of replacing me you have a rather high business penalty to me leaving.
This isn't to say I am unique or irreplaceable. There are probably 100-200 programmers who could do my job - with 3-6 months training - in my area (population: 60,000).
I can generally get what I want, because the management has learned from past experiences that I am (1) the best qualified and most productive person to hold this job in the 5 person history of the position, (2) I am key in keeping the division profitable, and (3) that replacing me would cost between $15k and $30k in training costs as well as anothe $10k-20k in lost revenues while my replacement comes up to speed.
The bottom line? My only way to resist is not stealing stuff from works or unionizing. Unionizing would hurt myself and others like me who are well above average in skill, productivity, and value-added to the company.
Unions are only useful when a company has little or no other place to which to turn. Since labor markets started opening up overseas, the power of the Union has declined dramatically. Funny how the movement of labor to overseas started at about the 30 year-ago-mark that you cited for the beginning of the decline.
I agree with you that the power of the Union has declined. I agree that the wealthy have taken unprecedented advantage of it. However, I'd like to point out that the rise to power of Japanese automobile manufacturers is a perfect example of what happens when American companies try to "play ball" with the unions. The only reason that American automobile companies are beginning to compete again is because the cost of manufacturing has risen dramatically in Japan.
Eventually "white collar" workers will realize that unions are the only way to resist.
All this would do is move jobs to India and China at a faster pace. If you really want to fix the problem, you have to get people to start paying attention to the employment practices of companies from which they purchase goods and services. All of those on-strike unionized workers continued to buy products from other companies who were treating their employees pretty much the same way. If you don't break this cycle, your union has no power at all, and only serves to give the company a reason to start offshoring.
GreyPoopon
--
Why is it I can write insightful comments but can't come up with a clever signature?
See...they want change/success, but they don't want to do anything different about their jobs. So, they want to do the same things day in and day out and somehow the "universe" is supposed to serve them up something different. Odd how little details like cause and effect don't seem to mind to management. If business is bad AND you continue to do business in the same way, it will continue to fail. If someone wants to change things then prepare for a fight/firing.
So, when you give up and let them be stupid or play along. Then you'll get rewarded...despite how poorly the company might be doing overall.
the goal of a just, modern society is workers who work less for more. The idea that we should all be furious worker bees is crap pushed on us by staggeringly greedy bastards who have been living like kings off other people's backs for as long as human society existed.
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It really was the good life on very little education.
Yeah, it was.
when they found other people in the world could do the same job and would do it for a fraction
Now that has been expanded to all jobs except management, so the "good life" isn't even available to those with four-year University educations any more. In fact, education has been rendered largely worthless because nothing can overcome the money grab of selling out to the lowest possible wage.
So, no house, no boat, no university, no cabin, no nothing. It's five to a rent application and hope they don't build a Wal-Mart.
It's all been sold, and progress it ain't.
Business isn't willing to pay for products, innovation and careers, so we get brands, mortgage commercials and layoffs.
I'm all for trying to look busy and impress the boss, but IMO there's too much slacking going on.
I work my ass off, I'm trying to get somewhere and do a good job at what I do. When you are surrounded by lazy people who do just enough work not to get fired, it makes it hard to get my stuff done when I am relying on other people to finish their portion of it, and it also makes others pissed at you for making them look bad.
The job I have now is fine, but a previous job was a nightmare. 60 hour workweeks could have been 30 if others had done the job they were paid to do. Not to mention, there are a ton of incompetent people out there that should not be in the positions that they are in.
I'm definitely not a model employee, but I want to get my work done and have a life outside of work. I make an extra effort to learn things that are useful to my job, and I expect my co-workers to do the same. Being the bad guy because you have a deeper understanding of a particular product or concept sucks.
One of my old roomie's books from college on business management said that you can't motivate employees with more money, but you can certainly demotivate them with not enough. Maybe that's the problem, I don't know. But, in any case, if I was in a position of power at a company, slackers would be scared. Slacking off not only hurts the company's bottom line (which most people could care less about), but more importantly, you are making more work for your co-workers, hurting morale, and possibly providing the company with ammo to get rid of your lazy ass.
Personally, I find it harder to stare at a cubicle wall than to actually just do my work that needs to get done. I've been at quite a few different jobs, and now that I think about it, the jobs that were very strict on hours were the ones that I saw the most slacking. If it takes one 2 hours to finish their work for the day, they should have the freedom to go home, go to training, etc. If they are making you be there 8 hours, and you are done with all of your work, it really doesn't give one an incentive to get it done. I guess if you treat your employees like children, they will act like it.
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Sounds like you are very happy in your job. Fine. Lots of people are. But there's a reason Dilbert is so popular, and it's not because cubicle-land is utopia. My experience of 25 years in the corporate world as a contractor, working for many different companies, is that managements that treat technical employees like commodities are more common than those that don't.
Post again someday after you change jobs and work for a manager who is technically clueless yet insists on micromanaging you anyway, who turns vague estimates into hard deadlines, who insists that you work 60 hrs/week to solve the latest crisis caused by his/her own ill-considered decisions, who believes outside consultants and ignores you, who basically wants you to shut and do as you're told and leave the thinking to the smarter, higher-paid people who get stock options. Then come back and preach the joys of your world.
that's a nice personal perspective, but what about the (by definition) large majority of workers who are *not* "well above average"?
true, employment is driven by a series of sticks and carrots, and i don't think we can get away from that; but should human beings necessarily have their destinies dictated by the results of endless "cage-match" style antagonism with their fellow workers (competitors), having nothing but their personal, individual strengths to protect them?
i think there is a role for collective power in the labor force. sure, everyone wants to maximize productivity, but there is something to be said for smoothing out the distribution of wealth too, and coming to common understandings about what makes a humane, non-hellish work environment. even if you, personally, believe you would do better in a dog-eat-dog environment, you're still living the life of a dog, and consigning those around you (many of whom, admittedly, may have lesser talents than yourself) to the same circumstances.
organized labor is simply the counterweight to amassed capital in the hands of the economic elite. capital would love to deal with each worker-unit individually, and play one against the other. the role of labor is to realize labor's true worth as a unit.
pr0n - keeping monitor glass spotless since 1981.
So you are basically tenured. You have a close rapport with your management, you are functioning well in the niche you have created. As the French author advocated, that is surely the best way to get ahead in a broken system.
Unionizing would hurt myself and others like me who are well above average in skill, productivity, and value-added to the company.
Unions are like insurance. Nothing but a drag when things are going well, but nothing is more dear when things are not. Your view, while totally understandable, is rather parochial and self-limited. You don't need to care about the fate of your less-talented and less-fortunate fellows. But if your status or capacities ever change, you may regret it.
Together, we will drive the rats from the tundra.
i cannot believe that this was modded up to 5. anyone arrogant and ignorant enough to believe that blue collar workers are just "human machines" and that white collar workers are somehow more intelligent and skilled either has a lot of growing up to do or desperately needs a visit from the down-sizing fairy.
the fact is, rare indeed is the employee who does not do the same task over and over again, white-collar/blue-collar be damned. my brother is an engineer with ford motor company. he graduated with honors from carnegie-mellon. know what he works on now, day in and day out? hood fasteners. they could just as easily replace him with another engineer to design hood fasteners as they could the union guy assembling them on the line. it is, my friend, the hallmark of working for corporate America. they do not want you to be indispensable, because then you are irreplaceable. they dedicate entire management training sessions to making sure that the enterprise is not exposed to that sort of risk.
unions protect their members against the amoral, artificial persons known as corporations. if you are not an executive with a high priced lawyer, or in a union that can protect your livelihood, then you are vulnerable. from the sound of it, your turn is long overdue, and mazeltov! redefining the meaning of "blue collar" and "white collar" to suit your current situation won't seem so cute then.
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
Or to summarise...
I'm white collar and costly to replace, therefore these blue collar issues are beneath me.
You sir are one arrogant bastard.
Human machines? You are the kind of trash that unions protect against.
You took the words right out of my mouth. It's not that the French are born to be slackers. It's that we Americans are born to be workaholics.
Frankly, very few of us do important enough work that if we put in 35 hour weeks instead of 80 the world would collapse in on itself. I mean, I take pride in what I do, but come on.
If you haven't been permanently banned from moderating slashdot yet, it means you weren't doing a very good job moderating.
My point is that unions are not the solution to your problems if you are a white collar worker. If you are white collar, a union is going to hurt you, not help you.
The tech world keeps thinking a union will save them. It won't. It will help the blue collar "human machines" of IT who are at risking to losing thier jobs to outsourcing.
I explained it very clearly. White collar workers gain security and pay through what they add to the company.
I clearly did not say I was irreplaceable. I said specifically that I was replaceable, but at a cost.
Just because someone works with marble and granite doesn't make them blue collar. It sounds to be me that your friend is actually an artisan - someone whose skill is both physical and aesthically based. If he is good, and his work is expensive to replicate he has very good bargaining position to go the company with.
Let me put it this way. A white collar person adding $150,000 to the bottom line of the company while his co-workers with similiar jobs are adding $100,000 is in a good position to ask for additional compensation of, say, $10,000 a year. All things being equal replacing him with an equally skilled worker is unlikely. The company would rather have that $50,000 in extra income minus the $10,000 extra than just have the same $100,000 as everyone else averages. The problem is that if these workers unionized, and say there were 10 of them, the person who had been there the longest would be getting the highest pay, on down the ladder. It's not a good productive situation, and the most productive are paid the best.
The bottom line is that unions are good at what they are good at: helping blue collar workers. White collar workers do not benefit in the same way that blue collar workers will.
I'm white collar and costly to replace, therefore these blue collar issues are beneath me.
Oh aye, sure. In Scotland we have a saying:'Self-praise comes aye stinkin ben.'
You are of course referring to blue-collar workers, like stone masons, and the sort of highly-skilled tradesmen who have been on the job for yonks and have seen it all. They have an eye for material that even with my experience and education I will never achieve. I'm a structural engineer, and the old fellows know that they can come up to me and point out anomalies in material that only the most practised eye can spot. I am always aware that despite my lofty status and advanced degrees, my buildings are no better than the crews who work on them. The structures are no stronger than my design, and the materials that go into them.
Have you considered that you too can be replaced, and probably will be replaced someday. It will most likely occur when you become too costly, and they find someone younger who can do your job for less pay. Even with your replacement's training factored in, at some point it will be more economical for them to sack you and hire some younger person to take your place.
We are all doing the same job over again, to some degree. Steelwork differs between projects, but it isn't programming, or cardiac surgery. Corporate executives see you no differently than you see some poor soul collecting rubbish by the side of the highway.
Only the greatest artists are irreplaceable, though even then other great artists come to fill the void they leave. The rest of us are simply competent, or merely brilliant. If you are deluded enough to think that your skills elevate you in management's eyes, and that those skills are sufficient to insure you job security for life, you're living in Cloud Coo-Coo Land. Unless you own the company, you have no control at all, and like the poor soul who picks up rubbish along the roads, your fate is at the mercy of other people. The reason for unions -- call it 'professional representation', if you require fawncy terms to prop up your snobbish façade -- is that there is strength in numbers, and protection for the individual when people stand together.
Julia Cameron
Oich ù agus hiùraibh éile
That is precisely what I have done - and five years later, we are looking at our second profitable year in a row (last years profits were less than $1000, and we paid no salary).
We lost everything in the great dot com bubble burst - our 401k lost 80% of its value and stock options weren't worth the paper they were penned on. I was not laid off, but my days were certainly short - the company, Global Crossing, went down the tubes less than 6 months after I walked away from my comfy System Admin position and fat salary.
My husband and I decided to live inexpensively and search for a niche market that we could be happy working in. We fell in love with the rugged back country of South East Utah. We tried several business models - one failed - some didn't get off the drawing board - and two are actually creating jobs for more than just myself and my husband. And two other business concepts are simmering and need employees to take off - I can only do so many jobs at once.
We did it all with no financial backing from banks, govt or venture capitalists. We sacrificed all the comforts that most people could not live without.
We purchased a modest home in a remote rural town for $38,000 and we've been building our skills and dreams ever since. We've worked low skill near-minimum wage jobs to ensure the house payment gets made. We've raised chickens and gardens to supplement our food stores. I've not had a car with air conditioning for nearly 5 years now. Did I mention I live in a desert?? One of our cars was purchased for $300 the other for $100. We work seven days per week and 14+ hours per day. But no one is going to lay us off. And the fruit of our labors is just beginning to ripen.
I formed a business incubator to help my business through low cost office space ($10/year). We've recently moved out of the incubator and into our own office. Business this month is 200x better than it was one year ago.
As for employees, I am just starting to search for the right people to help expand our business endeavors. I get to learn all about employee taxes and insurance. Now, my biggest obstacle is finding talented and intelligent people out in the styx ( the gene pool is a wee bit shallow out here), or luring compentent people out from the various silicon valleys - people who are sick of working for something that has no lasting value. Guess how many I've get beating down my door to take a huge paycut - so far, zero. I plan to post an internship on Craigslist this fall, I hope to find someone smart enough and worthwhile of my time and investment to further grow our business.
Until now, we haven't been able to expand or offer jobs that are guaranteed to pay the bills. I asked a couple dozen different friends to come out and put a stake in what we are building. No one came. But we have made this happen without all those things that are generally listed as needed to build a business. It CAN be done. Not by just anyone, but by those that are willing to make huge sacrifice and a long term commitment to making it happen.