Work vs. jobs

[nancylebov]

Paul Graham writes about jobs as normally constituted

The basic idea behind office hours is that if you can't make people work, you can at least prevent them from having fun.

and the possibilities of doing better

Things are different in a startup. Often as not a startup begins in an apartment. Instead of matching beige cubicles they have an assortment of furniture they bought used. They work odd hours, wearing the most casual of clothing. They look at whatever they want online without worrying whether it's "work safe." The cheery, bland language of the office is replaced by wicked humor. And you know what? The company at this stage is probably the most productive it's ever going to be.

Maybe it's not a coincidence. Maybe some aspects of professionalism are actually a net lose.

.
Another good quote:

I suspect professionalism was always overrated-- not just in the literal sense of working for money, but also connotations like formality and detachment. Inconceivable as it would have seemed in, say, 1970, I think professionalism was largely a fashion, driven by conditions that happened to exist in the twentieth century.

And here's the Washington Post on boredom in high-level jobs.

Bartlett had a secretary, staff, an important-sounding job and the paycheck to go with it. But, like many workers, he found himself underemployed and bored out of his mind.

And here's the Megan McArdle article I got the WashPost link from

But even my friends who live and breathe finance find a large portion of their work intensely boring. They are doing it because they hope that if they spend long enough proofreading powerpoint presentations and scrutinising IPO prospectuses, they will one day be paid really gargantuan sums of money to fly all over the world and tell CEO's how to finance their companies. This job is so fun and exciting that most of the people who do it retire by 50. But until they reach that halcyon horizon (and, with banking's military-inspired "up or out" model, only a small fraction of freshly-minted MBA banker larvae will ever get to that level) most of them are bored for much of the time.

It seems insane to me that so much human effort is wasted on wheel-spinning. While I think we're rich enough to be stupid, this just says that we can manage more elaborated and expensive stupidity than most societies, not that we have to behave that way. I suspect the root cause is actually conventional schooling which has teaching children to endure boredom as a primary purpose. Now, some of the work that needs to get done is boring, but the schools only teach the endurance of boredom--the assumption is that enthusiasm is not worth protecting or cultivating and furthermore gets in the way of scheduling.

See Reciprocality.org for the idea that boredom can become addictive--people can get so hooked on boredom that they're uncomfortable when it threatens to go away.

More to follow when I've got some coherent ideas about ways out, though I suspect that the biggie is capital goods (the tools you need for making something worth selling) getting cheaper. Google happened because it was no big deal to own computers. Blogs happened when it was no big deal for people to be able to write for the world. Things could get really interesting as manufacturing gets cheaper/smaller/cleaner.

The other thing to watch is the effects of home schooling--some of it is devoted to the idea of learning without boredom, and I'm expecting there to eventually be enough people who grew up that way to make a difference.

Linkage: Paul Graham writes really good essays--it's worth checking his site every month or two for new ones. I was reminded to do so by a post on the FLOWidealism mailing list.

Megan McCardle usually writes for her blog, Asymetrical Information. I recommend her articles (written as Jane Galt) over her co-blogger's pieces (Mindles H. Dreck).

Comments

But all this is whinging from the most priviledged people on the planet

[mouseworks.livejournal.com]

This is a bit tongue in cheek, and a bit harsh, but...

99% of human work has always been doing what you have to do to make or grow things you need. The conditions the priviledged middle class and upper middle class are living under are based on ways of escaping what Marx called the idiocy of rural life. Most of what we do is making sure that other people do the grunt work of making and growing. Rearranging the way we manage to get out of doing basic production probably relieves the boredom of being irrelevant for a while.

Commercial software is about controlling people. Open source is about making tools for making software that controls people.

None of us want to grow all our food, spinning and weave all our cloth, and build our houses.

The purpose of anything that isn't basic production is controlling those who do basic production. Efficiency is not really the goal of modern business -- it's absorbing the energies of alphas so they don't start free form militias as they do in places that don't have modern corporate structures.

Whining about the boredom of office work is something you have to be extremely rich by world standards to afford. No work that lengthens the distance between producer and consumer is useful work. Making the work more entertaining rather than more boring is probably dangerous.

Most human energy is spend in dominance displays. Whining about being bored while earning a dollar or two a minute is doing a dominance display.

Okay, I am being excessively snarky, but the real problem is over-population with billions of people being basically irrelevant and supported by an extremely efficient extractive process.

Food, shelter, clothes -- everything else should be good art.

Re: But all this is whinging from the most priviledged people on the planet

[madfilkentist]

Here's a simpler explanation:

Being organized is easy. (Please note that I said organized, not efficient or productive or purposeful.) People seem to have a genetic talent for falling into organizational patterns.

Having fun takes more effort, specifically mental effort.

Re: But all this is whinging from the most priviledged people on the planet

[still-asking.livejournal.com]

ah, I *knew* my brain was reverse wired somewhere - now youv'e helped me spot WHERE


'try this' is easy, and often leads to fun

maintaining any ONE organizational system is hard


Always knew I was a freak, and am happier being able to explicaty how and why - Thank you!

Re: But all this is whinging from the most priviledged people on the planet

[mouseworks.livejournal.com]

Organization in hunting bands makes sense, even if what you're doing in any one given set of hours is boring (chewing walrus hide, waiting for game to show up while the women and children drive it to you).

[kressel.livejournal.com]

How ironic to be reading this while waiting for something to do at work! Your analysis of being bored at school is biting and funny!

[zenlizard]

>Now, some of the work that needs to get done is boring, but the schools only teach the endurance of boredom

Ah, but you misss something. The fact that the phrase "may you live in interesting times" is cosidered a curse.

[orangemike.livejournal.com]

I have to concur with mouseworks that this "misery" would be considered inconceivable luxury by most of the people on this planet, including me. Don't ask me to sympathize with the plight of some upper-class suit-wearing drone who's got a "secretary, staff, an important-sounding job and the paycheck to go with it" and is whinging about how "underemployed and bored out of his mind" he is, while I apply for jobs as a janitor or half-time clerk in a prison, and wonder how I'll be able to fight off the credit card companies and Wisconsin Energy long enough to pay my little girl's daycare provider and this fall's tuition. (And I, by planetary standards, am well off: roof over my head, food, etc.)

(I can, however, find some sympathy in my heart for his secretary and other staff, especially if he's whiny or nasty.)

[still-asking.livejournal.com]

but from a planetary resources standpoint it's not about mr whiney-face

well, it's not about his discomfort anyhow

it's about his underutilization

if it were OK for him to do his job and then go home after the 15 or 20 hours he could prob. do it in, what else might he do? mabye just play golf? well that stimulates the economy I suppose, have to buy clubs and all that, but if we are lucky he might be a painter, of art for shared joy or of houses for community groups, he might be a volunteer in a school or a save the streams project

and his secretary and staff may be in the same bizzare "look busy" trap - I've worked places like that, on phones, the other low level staff let me in on the secret - never have a clear desk, or one past a certain clutter level - jobs were hard to get, we were not going to let these go,

maintainng the proper appearance of work was harder for me in some ways than just working would have been - but when I offered to start new projects that I thought would make life easier for everone when finished, the 'herd' turned on me, antlers flashing and told me that if I did that, I'd have to stand outside the circle when the wolves came through

[thette.livejournal.com]

Hmmm... I always found enthusiasm about learning the one thing that was different about me in school.

(But then, I probably was privileged. Most teachers actually gave me stuff to do, ahead of the class.)

[sethg]

In my job-before-last, I noticed that I was perpetually waiting for something to do, then discovered that my officemates were in the same situation. Then there was a massive round of layoffs.

In the job that followed that, I was paid a full-time salary for work that took up maybe a quarter of the time I spent in the office. My manager assured me that I was not at risk of getting laid off, and the company was making money. I assume that the main reason I was being kept on was that no manager will volunteer to reduce his headcount.