10 ms·

How work has gotten better

47 points by Futurebot 10y ago

eli_gottlieb 10y ago
To be frank, I completely disagree, and I get the feeling that so do most people, actually. We don't call it "work" because it's pleasant and fun. I see this as someone who finds his job genuinely engaging and almost, though not quite, a benefit to society, and whose alternate career paths would potentially involve more benefit to society and even more engagement in my work. My job would actually be fun if not for the unpleasant necessities involved in treating it as business that actually has to ship a product some day, which is of course exactly what makes it at all useful to society and not just a shared team hobby. Of course, the alternate career path would also involve significantly longer hours for significantly lower pay (ie: going back into academia), which brings us right back around to the point that it's called work because you don't like doing so damn much of it. Also, it really would have helped to segment out the statistics by income and education levels. Remember, the arithmetic average of a power-law distribution does not make sense.
- Bartweiss 10y ago
  The point about segmenting is big. I was absolutely baffled to see "people can't afford to move for work" answered by "the typical household is more mobile". That's not the same thing! The typical household isn't involuntarily unemployed, which is what we're talking about in the first place!
- Qantourisc 10y ago
  FOSS still ships, why wouldn't your team ?
  - AstralStorm 10y ago
    One in how many projects ships? And of those, how many are actually useful and useable? Scratching the itch goes only so far.
    - marcosdumay 10y ago
      Easy there or we might discover that FOSS numbers are better than enterprise ones. There's a very low bar to pass, and FOSS is going back into the UNIX's small software philosophy[1]. Scratching an itch may likely go far enough. [1] Yes, sometimes too small. Maybe we need new kinds of consolidation projects.
  - nvdk 10y ago
    Most successful FOSS projects are backed by companies who have employees work on them. I would love to see some statistics on pure "hobby FOSS" vs "commercial FOSS" and their deliverables. Based on my own experience I would say most hobby FOSS projects ship a lot less frequently than the commercial FOSS projects.
housel 10y ago
Interesting how little effect the introduction of OSHA seemed to have on the slope of the workplace fatalities trend graph. I would not have predicted that.
- Consultant32452 10y ago
  I wonder how much OSHA has cost us in terms of both direct government spending as well as regulatory compliance in corporations (which is surely orders of magnitude greater) for such pitiful results.
  - irremediable 10y ago
    You'd need to look at death/injury by sector to see its effect. FWIW, I don't have a horse in this race, but I'm inclined to believe OSHA is a good thing. AFAIK most economics/manufacturing research has suggested the health and safety precautions in developed countries are cost-effective. Moreover, it's probably telling that most (all?) other developed countries have similar health and safety agencies.
    - Consultant32452 10y ago
      If health and safety precautions are cost effective, which I believe they are, then OSHA is redundant because businesses will strive to be economically efficient regardless of the regulations.
      - irremediable 10y ago
        I think this would be true in an ideal world, but in practice I fear businesses can avoid dealing with the externality of employee injury. Many people working in building, manufacturing, manual labour, etc are low-paid, low-educated, and in the US may well be illegal residents. All of these things make it difficult for an injured worker to sue.
- chillwaves 10y ago
  Maybe because the incidence of death on the job was already low and safety (and consequences) is more than just about fatalities?
chillwaves 10y ago
This article seems to describe a certain breed of worker. I am sure a Walmart employee working their second job might disagree. It's true we have a lot more material wealth and luxury, but when basic necessities are denied such as adequate access to housing, health care and education, the people will suffer.
- saiya-jin 10y ago
  this is a complex topic. adequate housing is a relative term, and it's unreasonable to expect that everybody's wish to live as they want will ever be fulfilled, nor should be. that wallmart employee working in central new york should have a right to big condo near central park because... why? he has 3 kids? if somebody is a wallmart worker, I dare to say they are not trying hard enough. almost everybody can do better, definitely in western society. if they don't, it's more a matter of personal choices (what to study and do with your free time, willingness to relocate for better work, etc.) rather than anything else. it doesn't cover 100% of the cases, but most of them (also from personal experience).
  - twoquestions 10y ago
    "They're weak, so they deserve to be victims!" That's the same victim-blaming logic that ancient empires used to justify enslaving their weaker neighbors. Unless you're extremely rich/powerful, I'd avoid using such logic if I were you, as Fate may put you in a similar weak economic position someday.
    - saiya-jin 10y ago
      no. what this means is try harder if you want improvement over current state. be prepared for a change. please stop putting words in my mouth I didn't say nor implied and let's keep this discussion civil
      - SolaceQuantum 10y ago
        I don't really see a way to try harder than working at the culture at Wal-Mart as a minimum wage employee. Especially in new york city? That person is probably trying hard very hard to avoid homelessness.
capnrefsmmat 10y ago
If you find this interesting, you might enjoy The Rise and Fall of American Growth, which spends much of its time discussing the dramatic changes in American working and living conditions since the 1870s. It will certainly erase and illusions you have about the good old days. The conclusion (that the tech industry will not generate nearly as much growth as the previous revolution after 1870) is HN bait, and probably deserves a separate discussion.
RobertoG 10y ago
I don't understand how you can discuss work, the essay of Keynes, how works give meaning to life and... just don't say a word about how the results of that work are distributed.
grecy 10y ago
> Ensure we'll be able to retire. Unfortunately virtually every developed country has raised the age of retirement to 69 or higher, and it's generally accepted that in 30 years when I retire, there will be nothing in the communal pot, so I better save my own, as well as paying into the pot so the people before me can spend it.
- rm_-rf_slash 10y ago
  >in 30 years when I retire, there will be nothing in the communal pot. I assume you mean Social Security. Over the last 30 years upper-to-high incomes have skyrocketed while the legal SSA-taxable income cap remains at $118,500.[1] Reports of Social Security's imminent death are greatly exaggerated, and more often than not a part of a classic Neoliberal (1940s+ Neoliberalism, not the Clintonian/New Democrat brand) "starve-the-beast" plan to convince young people that the program is unsustainable and should be gutted so people can save a measly few percentage points of take-home income. It is a generations-long propaganda tactic that makes sense if you don't think too hard but the simple fact is that raising the cap modestly will keep Social Security solvent for a very long time. [1] https://www.ssa.gov/planners/maxtax.html https://www.ssa.gov/planners/maxtax.html
  - specialist 10y ago
    I'm ashamed I didn't know the origin, definition of neoliberalism. Ignorant me thought it was something like "new-liberalism" even though it was used in contexts where maybe something like "libertarian fruitopian Freedom Markets (tm) Murica!" seemed more appropriate. TIL neoliberalism means laissez faire economic liberalization a la Reagonomics and Thatcherism. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoliberalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoliberalism
- jahnu 10y ago
  I can't find a single country that has raised to to 69 let alone "virtually every developed country" Finland has 68 already and two will raise it to 68 eventually (Ireland and UK) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retirement_age https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retirement_age
- 10y ago
mathattack 10y ago
A couple things I've seen on work improving: - Much less reliance of physical papers and filing. Email, as much as people complain, is a much better record and easier to search than paper memos. - No more suits and ties. Dress for comfort. (For most of us, at least) - Much more flexibility on hours. - No more smoking in the office. (Yes, that was a thing) These don't apply to 100% of the world, but to some extent or another they impact most of us.
- Chris2048 10y ago
  Nice clothes are better than when you can do it right. Which means on the odd occasion.
  - mathattack 10y ago
    I'm not sure I follow you, but I agree that nice clothes are great for some occasions. But I don't miss situations where I was forced to wear a tie when I was staying up to the wee hours coding. (I didn't stay there, but just point this out to say that such jobs existed.)
    - Chris2048 10y ago
      The point is, it's hard to maintain a high standard when you have to do it all the time.
      - mathattack 10y ago
        Yes. Maintaining 6 or 7 expensive suit combos is a lot more expensive than casual-wear.
  - pavel_lishin 10y ago
    Another advantage of a more relaxed dress code is that it costs less. Five t-shirts and two pairs of jeans is a lot more affordable than a couple of suits, three dress shirts and enough ties to rotate through. (And that's before the cleaning costs.)

47 points by Futurebot 10y ago

To be frank, I completely disagree, and I get the feeling that so do most people, actually. We don't call it "work" because it's pleasant and fun. I see this as someone who finds his job genuinely engaging and almost, though not quite, a benefit to society, and whose alternate career paths would potentially involve more benefit to society and even more engagement in my work. My job would actually be fun if not for the unpleasant necessities involved in treating it as business that actually has to ship a product some day, which is of course exactly what makes it at all useful to society and not just a shared team hobby. Of course, the alternate career path would also involve significantly longer hours for significantly lower pay (ie: going back into academia), which brings us right back around to the point that it's called work because you don't like doing so damn much of it. Also, it really would have helped to segment out the statistics by income and education levels. Remember, the arithmetic average of a power-law distribution does not make sense.

Bartweiss 10y ago
The point about segmenting is big. I was absolutely baffled to see "people can't afford to move for work" answered by "the typical household is more mobile". That's not the same thing! The typical household isn't involuntarily unemployed, which is what we're talking about in the first place!
Qantourisc 10y ago
FOSS still ships, why wouldn't your team ?
- AstralStorm 10y ago
  One in how many projects ships? And of those, how many are actually useful and useable? Scratching the itch goes only so far.
  - marcosdumay 10y ago
    Easy there or we might discover that FOSS numbers are better than enterprise ones. There's a very low bar to pass, and FOSS is going back into the UNIX's small software philosophy[1]. Scratching an itch may likely go far enough. [1] Yes, sometimes too small. Maybe we need new kinds of consolidation projects.
- nvdk 10y ago
  Most successful FOSS projects are backed by companies who have employees work on them. I would love to see some statistics on pure "hobby FOSS" vs "commercial FOSS" and their deliverables. Based on my own experience I would say most hobby FOSS projects ship a lot less frequently than the commercial FOSS projects.

housel 10y ago

Interesting how little effect the introduction of OSHA seemed to have on the slope of the workplace fatalities trend graph. I would not have predicted that.

Consultant32452 10y ago
I wonder how much OSHA has cost us in terms of both direct government spending as well as regulatory compliance in corporations (which is surely orders of magnitude greater) for such pitiful results.
- irremediable 10y ago
  You'd need to look at death/injury by sector to see its effect. FWIW, I don't have a horse in this race, but I'm inclined to believe OSHA is a good thing. AFAIK most economics/manufacturing research has suggested the health and safety precautions in developed countries are cost-effective. Moreover, it's probably telling that most (all?) other developed countries have similar health and safety agencies.
  - Consultant32452 10y ago
    If health and safety precautions are cost effective, which I believe they are, then OSHA is redundant because businesses will strive to be economically efficient regardless of the regulations.
    - irremediable 10y ago
      I think this would be true in an ideal world, but in practice I fear businesses can avoid dealing with the externality of employee injury. Many people working in building, manufacturing, manual labour, etc are low-paid, low-educated, and in the US may well be illegal residents. All of these things make it difficult for an injured worker to sue.
chillwaves 10y ago
Maybe because the incidence of death on the job was already low and safety (and consequences) is more than just about fatalities?

chillwaves 10y ago

This article seems to describe a certain breed of worker. I am sure a Walmart employee working their second job might disagree. It's true we have a lot more material wealth and luxury, but when basic necessities are denied such as adequate access to housing, health care and education, the people will suffer.

saiya-jin 10y ago
this is a complex topic. adequate housing is a relative term, and it's unreasonable to expect that everybody's wish to live as they want will ever be fulfilled, nor should be. that wallmart employee working in central new york should have a right to big condo near central park because... why? he has 3 kids? if somebody is a wallmart worker, I dare to say they are not trying hard enough. almost everybody can do better, definitely in western society. if they don't, it's more a matter of personal choices (what to study and do with your free time, willingness to relocate for better work, etc.) rather than anything else. it doesn't cover 100% of the cases, but most of them (also from personal experience).
- twoquestions 10y ago
  "They're weak, so they deserve to be victims!" That's the same victim-blaming logic that ancient empires used to justify enslaving their weaker neighbors. Unless you're extremely rich/powerful, I'd avoid using such logic if I were you, as Fate may put you in a similar weak economic position someday.
  - saiya-jin 10y ago
    no. what this means is try harder if you want improvement over current state. be prepared for a change. please stop putting words in my mouth I didn't say nor implied and let's keep this discussion civil
    - SolaceQuantum 10y ago
      I don't really see a way to try harder than working at the culture at Wal-Mart as a minimum wage employee. Especially in new york city? That person is probably trying hard very hard to avoid homelessness.

capnrefsmmat 10y ago

If you find this interesting, you might enjoy The Rise and Fall of American Growth, which spends much of its time discussing the dramatic changes in American working and living conditions since the 1870s. It will certainly erase and illusions you have about the good old days. The conclusion (that the tech industry will not generate nearly as much growth as the previous revolution after 1870) is HN bait, and probably deserves a separate discussion.

RobertoG 10y ago

I don't understand how you can discuss work, the essay of Keynes, how works give meaning to life and... just don't say a word about how the results of that work are distributed.

grecy 10y ago

> Ensure we'll be able to retire. Unfortunately virtually every developed country has raised the age of retirement to 69 or higher, and it's generally accepted that in 30 years when I retire, there will be nothing in the communal pot, so I better save my own, as well as paying into the pot so the people before me can spend it.

rm_-rf_slash 10y ago
>in 30 years when I retire, there will be nothing in the communal pot. I assume you mean Social Security. Over the last 30 years upper-to-high incomes have skyrocketed while the legal SSA-taxable income cap remains at $118,500.[1] Reports of Social Security's imminent death are greatly exaggerated, and more often than not a part of a classic Neoliberal (1940s+ Neoliberalism, not the Clintonian/New Democrat brand) "starve-the-beast" plan to convince young people that the program is unsustainable and should be gutted so people can save a measly few percentage points of take-home income. It is a generations-long propaganda tactic that makes sense if you don't think too hard but the simple fact is that raising the cap modestly will keep Social Security solvent for a very long time. [1] https://www.ssa.gov/planners/maxtax.html https://www.ssa.gov/planners/maxtax.html
- specialist 10y ago
  I'm ashamed I didn't know the origin, definition of neoliberalism. Ignorant me thought it was something like "new-liberalism" even though it was used in contexts where maybe something like "libertarian fruitopian Freedom Markets (tm) Murica!" seemed more appropriate. TIL neoliberalism means laissez faire economic liberalization a la Reagonomics and Thatcherism. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoliberalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoliberalism
jahnu 10y ago
I can't find a single country that has raised to to 69 let alone "virtually every developed country" Finland has 68 already and two will raise it to 68 eventually (Ireland and UK) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retirement_age https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retirement_age
10y ago

mathattack 10y ago

A couple things I've seen on work improving: - Much less reliance of physical papers and filing. Email, as much as people complain, is a much better record and easier to search than paper memos. - No more suits and ties. Dress for comfort. (For most of us, at least) - Much more flexibility on hours. - No more smoking in the office. (Yes, that was a thing) These don't apply to 100% of the world, but to some extent or another they impact most of us.

Chris2048 10y ago
Nice clothes are better than when you can do it right. Which means on the odd occasion.
- mathattack 10y ago
  I'm not sure I follow you, but I agree that nice clothes are great for some occasions. But I don't miss situations where I was forced to wear a tie when I was staying up to the wee hours coding. (I didn't stay there, but just point this out to say that such jobs existed.)
  - Chris2048 10y ago
    The point is, it's hard to maintain a high standard when you have to do it all the time.
    - mathattack 10y ago
      Yes. Maintaining 6 or 7 expensive suit combos is a lot more expensive than casual-wear.
- pavel_lishin 10y ago
  Another advantage of a more relaxed dress code is that it costs less. Five t-shirts and two pairs of jeans is a lot more affordable than a couple of suits, three dress shirts and enough ties to rotate through. (And that's before the cleaning costs.)