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How Two Bored 1970s Housewives Helped Create the PC Industry
harrymcc writes: One of the first significant PC companies was Vector Graphic. Founded in 1976, it was an innovator in everything from industrial design to sales and marketing, and eventually went public. And alone among early PC makers, it was founded and run by two women, Lore Harp and Carole Ely. Over at Fast Company, Benj Edwards tells the story of this fascinating, forgotten company.
Yes, [too many] men are too stupid to complain and tend to keep their job and [too many] women are stupid enough to complain and then be fired or quit when things don't change. I do love have you spin it as the stupidity of men and the problem with women, though. It nicely twists it as though men are actually stupid for valuing their job over the abuse when they realize they likely can't do anything about it--quitting doesn't really count since that doesn't change the company they were working at and their new job may be as bad or worse. And it (presumably) sarcastically states it as a "problem with women" that they'd dare to change the status quo and when they're unfairly fired or when they have enough and quit, at least they were "smart" to cause "problem(s)" and fight an injustice system. Well, unfortunately without either readily enforced laws (lawsuits don't count since they're not readily enforced), massively unionized boycott of such behavior, or having a new CEO/president/whatever who really wants to see change happen, things aren't going to change at the scale of the endemic problem being resolved in any sustained, wide-spread fashion. Everything else and you're just accepting that a lot (if not a majority) of companies will be shitty; the shittier companies will likely get worse (as those who wish to abuse will gravitate to the companies that can abuse in); and people will either be paid more for it, derive some other sort of in-job benefit (easier work, less required overtime, etc), or they'll suffer without any real extra benefit because the job market is well saturated and there isn't much room to migrate to one of the better companies.
Or in short, if you're the breadwinner and have had a lifetime of learning to put up with bullshit to be "manly" you'll tolerate a shitty job. And anything less and you'll be called a pussy or a "Millennial" or whatever and people will decry you without really looking at the why. I mean, honestly, considering the advancements in productivity, if you're working more than ~20 hours/week, you're the same sort of chump as everyone else Because the 40 hour work week was an arbitrary standard to set (8 hours of work, 8 hours of leisure, 8 hours of sleep with 2 days off) and as much there's no reason we couldn't or shouldn't have a second unionized revolution to drop the hours to work in half again and maybe even add an extra day off a week.