16 ms·

The 40h a day week and modern-day work contracts come as a direct evolution of medieval servitude, with little modification. This explains the system of values

by vfc1 7y ago

The 40h a day week and modern-day work contracts come as a direct evolution of medieval servitude, with little modification. This explains the system of values that revolve around it, such as for example the notion that it's somewhat something to be ashamed of for an employee to leave its employer, while it's perfectly OK for the employer to terminate the employee at any time. The servant was not expected to leave its master, that was not OK. Or that you are expected to be available at all times, even though the contract only mentions 40h, and that is perfectly OK and even interiorized as acceptable by most people, which will even go to the extent of defending that state of affairs. What I see in the workforce is a desperate need for people to continuously prove the need for their own role, as automation and informatization eat away more an more jobs. It's a game of face time, who sends most emails past midnight, and who is willing to sell more of their personal life and squeeze other people out of theirs, often to do "important" tasks that are often completely unnecessary. I had a couple of jobs where I was working overtime, running for deadlines all the time, sending emails left an right, meetings, you name it. One day I had enough and I left, and to my surprise, I was never replaced :-)

growlist 7y ago
When everything is urgent, nothing is urgent.
rubber_duck 7y ago
> such as for example the notion that it's somewhat something to be ashamed of for an employee to leave its employer, while it's perfectly OK for the employer to terminate the employee at any time. Your entire post is overgeneralization and dramatizing to prove some poorly thought out hypothesis but this here is the most obvious example. When there is enough choice people change jobs all the time - the demand in my local dev market went through the roof last couple of years for multiple reasons - I see people change 2 jobs within a year, demand all sorts of things - last round of job interviews I did the interviewers spent double the time explaining why their company was a great fit for me instead of actually interviewing me for position - compared to the usual narrative of asking why I fit them. The situation is pretty much dictated by supply/demand and both sides take advantage. Firing and quitting can have negative implications for both sides, just depends on scenario. I don't see where shame enters the equation.
- zulgan 7y ago
  I guess this is cultural as well, I(anecdotally) absolutely feel shame when I am about to leave a company, or even negotiate.
  - ironic_ali 7y ago
    Ask yourself why you feel these emotions, because the culture you're in had to have made you learn them. The companies you have worked for sure as hell do not care about you once you leave. Source: personal experience
    - CathedralBorrow 7y ago
      All correct, but cultural things like these can't exactly be dispelled with logic.
      - kingkawn 7y ago
        Culture comes from people. Taking the reins of culture and leading it to new places is entirely natural
  - raducu 7y ago
    Funny because my todler is never ashamed to loudly demand what she wants, yet as adults we feel shame when we want to negotiate. It absolutely is cultural.
    - Cederfjard 7y ago
      Well, isn't also the case that a toddler still hasn't fully developed their empathy and other mental faculties, and thus aren't capable of understanding the full extent of how their behavior affects others (and indeed why they should care). I'm not saying that anyone should feel ashamed to negotiate for better compensation (quite the opposite!), but I'm also not sure that you can look at those little uncooked narcissists and conclude "this is how a human being naturally behaves". I think it's pretty normal for a person with mature emotions to feel at least a bit bad when making demands.
H8crilA 7y ago
Simple rules that work for me: a) don't take my work laptop home, no corp provided phone (if they insist I'd keep the phone at my work desk, where it belongs). b) work 40 hours on average per week. Just go home already! Helps if you're a late sleeper (like me), you can simply arrive later at work to compensate for the hours you've recently donated to your employer. This works very well for me, although I'm based in Europe, ymmv.
- vfc1 7y ago
  This is what I did too, leave the laptop at work, arrive relatively late, as I knew I had to leave late anyway. It makes it more bearable, but it still kind of sucks, and everyone in your team is doing it (taking laptop home, answering calls), eventually, it's going to cost you. You get to work in the morning, and there is this long email thread about how something was "urgent" or went wrong and they tried to reach you and they couldn't... all that good email delivered peer pressure stuff, passing the bucket blame it on the absentee kind of thing.
  - JackFr 7y ago
    I think that BS only persists because not just because people allow it to, but some people positively get off on it. They love the opportunity to be the hero "I was up from 4 til 7 rebuilding the database -- you're welcome" and the ability to differentiate themselves without actually being competent at their jobs. Some roles (junior investment banking analysts, junior lawyers, etc) the long hours and weekends are part of an apprenticeship type weeding out process, and are almost a form of hazing ("I did it - you have to do it too") But at least in those cases there is an expected path out. It sounds like you are in a dysfunctional shop. If it's possible, move. It's not like that everywhere.
    - mywittyname 7y ago
      > "I was up from 4 til 7 rebuilding the database -- you're welcome" and the ability to differentiate themselves without actually being competent at their jobs. Some do this because it's in their nature. They don't spend their free time doing enjoyable, fulfilling tasks for whatever reason, so work is really the only form of stimulation they have. Older women without children (or adult children) seem to be particularly susceptible to this.
lostjohnny 7y ago
> The 40h a day week and modern-day work contracts come as a direct evolution of medieval servitude, with little modification. Citation needed It really come from workers rights to have a life outside the workplace AND a salary even when they could not work (what we call safety). In medieval servitude there was no life outside the workplace, nor safety. Pre-induistrial workers worked less, on the average, because they were surviving They were working when they needed money and not working (AKA doing some other job for the house or the family, like farming or breeding cows and pigs) when they had enough to go on for maybe a week or so. Life was on the edge back then. You had an accident, any kind of accident, you were ruined. There was no safety net, of any kind. > it's a game of face time, who sends most emails past midnight, and who is willing to sell more of their personal life and squeeze other people out of theirs It's not in Europe, for example, where we don't think that socialism is a curse word, we think it is necessary for the progress of society as a whole. I will quote one of my favourite computer scientist ever, Joe Armstrong, creator of Erlang, that unfortunately recently passed away. > Yes - happy days. At the time I was working a 6 hour day due to the enlightened Swedish child care policies. Parents of young children are entitled to work 80% of full time - good for creativity and family life. Result 2 kids and a new programming language. source: https://twitter.com/joeerl/status/1067720315151810560 https://twitter.com/joeerl/status/1067720315151810560
- johannes1234321 7y ago
  > Pre-induistrial workers worked less, on the average, because they were surviving > They were working when they needed money and not working (AKA doing some other job for the house or the family, like farming or breeding cows and pigs) when they had enough to go on for maybe a week or so. Especially they worked depending on the season. During planting or harvest they were on the fields from dawn till dusk. In winter they took care of the animals and stayed by the fire place inside. Manufacturing work had similar cycles. Only industrialisation brought working cycles independent from season and daylight.
  - earth2eca 7y ago
    This is a cohesive response. The definition of work is itself a manifestation of industrialization, post-U.S. revolution. Previously, in the teleologically-oriented universe of the Medieval period and early Enlightenment, there was little if any distinction between work and life. Exceptions were for those who sought to become members of Guilds -- the architects, alchemists, millers, bakers and too herbalist apothecaries whose guild was closesly associated to the early Catholic church and later, loosely, with Luther's heresy.
HSO 7y ago
> The 40h a day week and modern-day work contracts come as a direct evolution of medieval servitude, with little modification. Well, in Europe it is more the estate system and urban manufactures, I think, that have influenced the culture of work. In the US, you have something much worse even. I found this recent article eye-opening for me: [1] M. Desmond. In order to understand the brutality of american capitalism, you have to start on the plantation. New York Times Magazine, Aug 18 2019. web: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/08/14/magazine/slavery-capitalism.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/08/14/magazine/slav... > a desperate need for people to continuously prove the need for their own role, as automation and informatization eat away more an more jobs. While I agree with this (go @AndrewYang! ;), I don't think it is the only (or even the biggest) factor. It is the long shadow of WWII and the resulting demographic imbalance coupled with a self-serving but fundamentally wrong narrative around "economic growth". This has led to what some have called "the big institutional lie" where throughout society you have institutions that rely on promises of advancement or necessity to lure the fresh blood but that can not keep these promises to all of them. It's basically a pyramid scheme. Peter Turchin pointed to this as a contributing factor to polarization as the educated "elite" of such countries/societies must increasingly fight among itself for the increasingly rare places or resources (relatively speaking). → revolutionary potential
- lotsofpulp 7y ago
  >"the big institutional lie” The big lie is all the lavish promises people made to their future selves. Expensive medical treatments (Medicare), retirement funds (social security/pension payments), expensive infrastructure (constant access to clean water/electricity/gas/sewage/etc). Maybe the biggest lie is pretending to be able to predict the future. All those aforementioned promises require future resources, population, growth, technological advances, all of which are just guesses as to what will be available in the future.
  - lostjohnny 7y ago
    > Expensive medical treatments Again. Universal healthcare solved that in Europe. It is expensive, but it's a shared cost that benefits everybody. > Maybe the biggest lie is pretending to be able to predict the future Maybe, but back then they didn't have the means to care for more than a few days at a time, to think about the future. If they could have done it, they would have done it.
sgregnt 7y ago
You can open your own business and run it differently, and show everyone how sucessful your approach is.
MichaelMoser123 7y ago
> The 40h a day week and modern-day work contracts come as a direct evolution of medieval servitude, with little modification. Where can i read more about this assertion? I was not aware that serfdom would specify such details as the number of hours. I guess that serfdom would be a very different institution in each country, or even within each province; (I guess corvée service might have been a more detailed contract, but I am not aware of the details) so I would like to hear some more details.
- ryanmercer 7y ago
  >I was not aware that serfdom would specify such details as the number of hours. I'm not sure they did, but your work day was effectively limited to when the sun was up. Candles were quite expensive well through the middle ages as they were mostly made from beeswax, lower class persons would use fires or candles made from soaking things like rushes in animal fat - neither of which provided light conducive to any sort of work.
  - MichaelMoser123 7y ago
    the landlord still had to allow his serfs to work their own plot/cottage on occasion; so they had to agree on some form of time management, even without clocks or candles.
- bluntfang 7y ago
  >Where can i read more about this assertion? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_history_of_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_history_of_the_United_St... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labour_movement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labour_movement
- etripe 7y ago
  Bullshit Jobs by David Graeber goes into it tangentially, as part of making a greater point.
dragonwriter 7y ago
> The 40h a day week and modern-day work contracts come as a direct evolution of medieval servitude, with little modification. Not really, they come as rather significant modifications of early capitalist servitude, won at a substantial cost in lives. Early capitalist servitude did itself evolve directly from feudal servitude, but it got much worse, in economic terms, in the process. It usually came with at least notional political freedom, though.
- macspoofing 7y ago
  >Early capitalist servitude did itself evolve directly from feudal servitude, but it got much worse, in economic terms, in the process. No it didn't. This Roussaunian idealization of rural subsistence living must really die. People aren't idiots, you don't move to urban factory work (as bad as it was compared to modern day) unless rural life was much worse.
  - azernik 7y ago
    Standard of living rose by some measures on moving to the cities; however, the dependence on an employer was much greater than the old dependence on your lord.
    - macspoofing 7y ago
      >Standard of living rose by some measures on moving to the cities Some? >the dependence on an employer was much greater than the old dependence on your lord. I'm not sure that's actually true.
    - dragonwriter 7y ago
      > however, the dependence on an employer was much greater than the old dependence on your lord I'm not sure the dependence was much greater, but it was less likely to be honored restart than mercilessly abused by the employer, because capitalism arose in the context of a huge labor surplus created by agricultural productivity revolutions, whereas feudal tenancy arose in tighter labor conditions and had grown traditions (and in some cases legal structures) based on that. Which is not too say that feudalism was without massive abuses of dependent relationships, itself.
JTbane 7y ago
We'd have to work weekends as well, if it were not for religion. Kind of funny, kind of sad.
wolfgke 7y ago
> This explains the system of values that revolve around it, such as for example the notion that it's somewhat something to be ashamed of for an employee to leave its employer, while it's perfectly OK for the employer to terminate the employee at any time. This looks very USA-centric to me. In Germany, the mentality is rather that both directions are to be ashamed of.
conanbatt 7y ago
You don't even imagine how much employers do to favor employees. This jaded view from corporate america, by corporate employees, ignores that the majority of employment comes from small businesses that eat up losses all the time to not lose valuable employees.
macspoofing 7y ago
>The 40h a day week and modern-day work contracts come as a direct evolution of medieval servitude, with little modification. You're claiming the opposite of what the article does. Medieval serfs did not work a 40h week. >This explains the system of values that revolve around it No. >such as for example the notion that it's somewhat something to be ashamed of for an employee to leave its employer, while it's perfectly OK for the employer to terminate the employee at any time. Says who? This is so overbroad that it doesn't actually match reality. Lots of people quit jobs all the time. >The servant was not expected to leave its master, that was not OK. Come on. You have an angle you want to argue but you can't just distort reality to fit your conclusion. Nothing you argued is broadly true, though I'm sure you can find individual examples.
tryitnow 7y ago
It is something to be ashamed of for employees to leave their employers? Where? I've worked in a few places in the US and I never sensed any "shame" when an employee left. I have sensed that employers feel shame when laying people off though. I think the modern wage labor relation is very different than medieval serfdom, on both sides. Marx does a good job of explaining this Kaptial Vol. I. What is the same is the basic exploitation that underlies that relationship. I agree 100% with the rest of what you say though, there are too many people taking BS jobs too seriously.
onlyrealcuzzo 7y ago
At my last company, there were several employees who spent the vast majority of their time trying to convince people their jobs are important. Whether I thought they were or not is kind of irrelevant, but it seems insane to work a job where the majority of your time spent is convincing people it makes sense for you to have a job.
- perl4ever 7y ago
  At a place I previously worked, I heard a rumor that the entire job of someone who was fairly high up was to email a simple report to someone higher up every day. As someone put it, the job of a crontab entry. Since then, I started a job that was ostensibly non-technical, and it seems like people are overly impressed by anyone who can provide a dashboard style report, and it's as though you're assumed to be putting forth significant effort every time you make a new one. If I was able to act in a more strategic manner, I would not let on that I had automated such things, and soon my entire job would be pushing a button three or four times a day.
JBSay 7y ago
Somehow I don't think you know much about medieval serfdom. While the serf was not allowed to leave neither was the lord allowed kick the serf out of his land. The only way the lord could "fire" a serf was to sell the associated land in which case he would simply become the serf of another lord. By contrast employees are not attached to their place of work and are free to leave. The two systems have nothing in common.
- swayvil 7y ago
  He was offering that "proving worth to the lord" was fundamental to that psychology. Which fits in with your scenario just fine.
  - JBSay 7y ago
    That's the point. A serf didn't have to prove his worth. An employee does.
    - swayvil 7y ago
      A serf who can't prove his worth get beatings and demotions. Ultimately death.
      - JBSay 7y ago
        Do yourself a favour and open a history book.
        swayvil 7y ago
        I admit it, I was talking from my vast experience with Braveheart.
        swayvil 7y ago
        How does a lord ensure that his serfs perform?
damq 7y ago
> the notion that it's somewhat something to be ashamed of for an employee to leave its employer, while it's perfectly OK for the employer to terminate the employee at any time. Did you just make this up? The stigma is the exact opposite. Western society makes it quite difficult to fire employees. Hell, it's even illegal to fire striking employees. You'd be hard-pressed to find any employer willing to fire an employee without thoroughly documented evidence of the employee's malfeasance. The only time anybody gets fired is when they really really deserved it. In contrast, many employees leave their jobs capriciously with little to no consequence.
- bobwaycott 7y ago
  You appear to live in quite the bubble if you really believe this with absolute certainty. > Western society makes it quite difficult to fire employees. Have you worked in a US "right-to-work" state? It's incredibly easy to fire people. Large companies are typically the only businesses that bother with "thoroughly documented evidence of the employee's malfeasance". And even that is rare. > You'd be hard-pressed to find any employer willing to fire an employee without thoroughly documented evidence of the employee's malfeasance. The only time anybody gets fired is when they really really deserved it. I'm just a single data point. I'm a bit of a workaholic. I'm also a perfectionist. And I'm someone who always busts his ass at every job. In the last 20 years in TN, I have encountered the following occasions: - During college, I worked part-time at Books-a-Million in their little cafe. I had the laziest, most unreliable cafe "manager" I've ever met—she would regularly be 30+ minutes late to shifts, causing me to be late to classes and events; she would constantly offload managerial tasks to me when we shared a shift; she would spend vast majorities of her shifts talking on the phone with family and friends; she wouldn't respond to customers at the counter if I was busy (because she was on the phone), and would ignore them waiting for me to get to them; when I would follow her shifts, she never spent any time at all cleaning up after herself, and left the entire area a fucking mess; the list goes on. When Spring Break hit, I'd had a pre-approved vacation on the books for nearly 3 months—a road trip to Chicago with friends. My ride showed up 15 minutes before my shift ended and came in for a coffee to wait for me to be relieved by the manager. One hour later, I finally called the manager. She was at home watching TV (yes, she told me that directly). I asked if she was aware she was supposed to be relieving me so I could leave for vacation, and she said yes. I told her my ride had been waiting for over an hour by this point, and needed to leave because it was a long drive. She complained about having to work on a Saturday. Said she guessed she'd go get in the shower and start getting ready for work. I decided I'd had enough of this behavior after nearly 1 year—I told her that I would be leaving in 30 minutes whether she was there or not. And since she's the manager, an 18-yr-old kid shouldn't be displaying more responsibility, reliability, and dedication to his part-time job than she, as a 30-something, gave to her full-time job. Then I thanked her and hung up. I then wrote all this up in the cafe log book—a book we were supposed to write important notes for store management in that they would review daily. She showed up right at 30 minutes later, and I left. Upon returning from the vacation, she called and asked if I'd come in and cover a shift for her. I agreed. Upon arriving at the store, she was there, and she and the store manager told me I was fired for insubordination. I had expected it, of course, but that's beside the point. I'm sure I really really deserved to be the one fired in that situation, right? - Nearly 20 years ago, I was fired from Best Buy. I'd worked there for somewhere close to 9 months, I think. Never missed a day. Even walked to work after my clutch went out on the interstate. The day before departing for an approved vacation, I declined the female store manager's advances and being asked out. The day I returned, I was asked to sign a document declaring that the reason for my firing was poor job performance and missing work. My direct manager on the pre-Geek Squad declined to sign the form—telling me privately afterward there was no way he could sign such a statement because he absolutely depended on me and was now fucked without a replacement—but wouldn't you know it ... lucky for Best Buy there was a store manager who was happy to do it. I declined to sign the form, informing them I'd happily sign a form that declared I was being fired after declining to go out with a superior. They declined to provide such a form, so I wrote it myself on their form, after striking through their bullshit reason, and signed that statement. But again, surely I really really deserved being fired there. - 17 years ago, I worked as a temp worker with Randstad for Maytag in one of their customer service centers. It was a pretty easy job—just take calls all day and help people figure out appliance problems. One day, Maytag announced they were moving a US factory to Renosa, Mexico. There were quite a few jobs being lost. That night, at home, on my personal computer, I was doing some research into US companies moving factories to Mexico. There was a particular organization in Texas that helped facilitate such moves who mentioned working with Maytag on their website. They had a form on their site you could fill out for more information, or to ask questions. So, I filled out the form—asked some specific questions about working conditions, average pay rates of Mexican workers compared to US workers, time to spin up factories, worker treatment, and a few other things. I put my name, email, and phone number in the form. There was an input that asked where I worked that was required—so I just typed in Maytag without thinking and moved on. The next morning, I arrived at my desk to a couple managers waiting for me. Followed them into the office, where they showed me a printout of the form I had filled out the night before on my personal computer at home. All the questions I'd asked. They asked what I thought I was doing. I simply explained—in absolute honesty—I was very curious about how factory moves work, how workers are treated and paid in Mexico, especially compared to union workers at Maytag's existing US factories, and had found that site saying they could provide such information. They told me I was a customer service rep and had no business looking into such matters, and then informed me I was being fired for impersonating Maytag company personnel and misrepresenting their interests. But, of course, I really really deserved it. > Hell, it's even illegal to fire striking employees. - Oh, this is a funny one. About 15 years ago, I was fired after getting involved with union organizing, and sharing some literature and discussing unions with my coworkers. This was in a factory, where part of the employees were already unionized, but the company was subcontracting jobs out to cheaper, non-union workers like me. I mean, it's supposed to be illegal to fire someone for union organizing. Ah, the beauty of a right-to-work state—where every employee is an at-will employee, and you can pretty much make up any excuse to fire them. But alas, I'm sure I really really deserved it. I moved into sales for a few years after that, and did really well. Then I finally decided to put my computer skills to use as a software developer 12 years ago—and subsequently turned that into running my own business for the last 7 or 8 years. The tech world has been quite different—though there are still plenty of issues that could be improved. However, the lessons of my years of "normal" employment were quite clear—in right-to-work states, it's absolutely okay for employers to terminate any employee, any time, for any reason. Real reasons. Utter bullshit reasons. It doesn't matter. The employer has all the power, and the employee has to just take it or lose their job and income.
goto11 7y ago
> The 40h a day week and modern-day work contracts come as a direct evolution of medieval servitude, with little modification. Edgy. But also deeply ignorant of history. Servitude means you can't quit your job. That is a pretty significant modification!
- papito 7y ago
  A lot of people can't. They will literally not be able to pay bills.
  - chaostheory 7y ago
    Most people need a job. That's not the same as being unable to switch employers, or being unable to move to a better market.
papito 7y ago
When you are on your deathbed, your first thought will not be "man, I wished I had worked more".
1000units 7y ago
It has everything to do with power. You don't even need to consult the history. Large organizations very rarely need any particular drone. The drones always need money to survive, their health insurance, stability for their family, a clean professional reputation. So the big guys takes advantage of the little guys. Early in my career, I worked a lot and was compensated poorly for the value I brought to the business. Then I built systems that made me very difficult to get rid of without losing all the money I was bringing in. Now I make double and work 30 hours a week when I'm busy. For any reasonably large corporation, your employer is not your friend. They deserve professional courtesy, but never loyalty or personal respect. Always look out for yourself, what you bring to the table, and what you're getting out of it. Forget anything else. If you want something personal, go home to your wife and kids at a reasonable hour. They love you.

by vfc1 7y ago

growlist 7y ago

When everything is urgent, nothing is urgent.

rubber_duck 7y ago

> such as for example the notion that it's somewhat something to be ashamed of for an employee to leave its employer, while it's perfectly OK for the employer to terminate the employee at any time. Your entire post is overgeneralization and dramatizing to prove some poorly thought out hypothesis but this here is the most obvious example. When there is enough choice people change jobs all the time - the demand in my local dev market went through the roof last couple of years for multiple reasons - I see people change 2 jobs within a year, demand all sorts of things - last round of job interviews I did the interviewers spent double the time explaining why their company was a great fit for me instead of actually interviewing me for position - compared to the usual narrative of asking why I fit them. The situation is pretty much dictated by supply/demand and both sides take advantage. Firing and quitting can have negative implications for both sides, just depends on scenario. I don't see where shame enters the equation.

zulgan 7y ago
I guess this is cultural as well, I(anecdotally) absolutely feel shame when I am about to leave a company, or even negotiate.
- ironic_ali 7y ago
  Ask yourself why you feel these emotions, because the culture you're in had to have made you learn them. The companies you have worked for sure as hell do not care about you once you leave. Source: personal experience
  - CathedralBorrow 7y ago
    All correct, but cultural things like these can't exactly be dispelled with logic.
    - kingkawn 7y ago
      Culture comes from people. Taking the reins of culture and leading it to new places is entirely natural
- raducu 7y ago
  Funny because my todler is never ashamed to loudly demand what she wants, yet as adults we feel shame when we want to negotiate. It absolutely is cultural.
  - Cederfjard 7y ago
    Well, isn't also the case that a toddler still hasn't fully developed their empathy and other mental faculties, and thus aren't capable of understanding the full extent of how their behavior affects others (and indeed why they should care). I'm not saying that anyone should feel ashamed to negotiate for better compensation (quite the opposite!), but I'm also not sure that you can look at those little uncooked narcissists and conclude "this is how a human being naturally behaves". I think it's pretty normal for a person with mature emotions to feel at least a bit bad when making demands.

H8crilA 7y ago

Simple rules that work for me: a) don't take my work laptop home, no corp provided phone (if they insist I'd keep the phone at my work desk, where it belongs). b) work 40 hours on average per week. Just go home already! Helps if you're a late sleeper (like me), you can simply arrive later at work to compensate for the hours you've recently donated to your employer. This works very well for me, although I'm based in Europe, ymmv.

vfc1 7y ago
This is what I did too, leave the laptop at work, arrive relatively late, as I knew I had to leave late anyway. It makes it more bearable, but it still kind of sucks, and everyone in your team is doing it (taking laptop home, answering calls), eventually, it's going to cost you. You get to work in the morning, and there is this long email thread about how something was "urgent" or went wrong and they tried to reach you and they couldn't... all that good email delivered peer pressure stuff, passing the bucket blame it on the absentee kind of thing.
- JackFr 7y ago
  I think that BS only persists because not just because people allow it to, but some people positively get off on it. They love the opportunity to be the hero "I was up from 4 til 7 rebuilding the database -- you're welcome" and the ability to differentiate themselves without actually being competent at their jobs. Some roles (junior investment banking analysts, junior lawyers, etc) the long hours and weekends are part of an apprenticeship type weeding out process, and are almost a form of hazing ("I did it - you have to do it too") But at least in those cases there is an expected path out. It sounds like you are in a dysfunctional shop. If it's possible, move. It's not like that everywhere.
  - mywittyname 7y ago
    > "I was up from 4 til 7 rebuilding the database -- you're welcome" and the ability to differentiate themselves without actually being competent at their jobs. Some do this because it's in their nature. They don't spend their free time doing enjoyable, fulfilling tasks for whatever reason, so work is really the only form of stimulation they have. Older women without children (or adult children) seem to be particularly susceptible to this.

lostjohnny 7y ago

> The 40h a day week and modern-day work contracts come as a direct evolution of medieval servitude, with little modification. Citation needed It really come from workers rights to have a life outside the workplace AND a salary even when they could not work (what we call safety). In medieval servitude there was no life outside the workplace, nor safety. Pre-induistrial workers worked less, on the average, because they were surviving They were working when they needed money and not working (AKA doing some other job for the house or the family, like farming or breeding cows and pigs) when they had enough to go on for maybe a week or so. Life was on the edge back then. You had an accident, any kind of accident, you were ruined. There was no safety net, of any kind. > it's a game of face time, who sends most emails past midnight, and who is willing to sell more of their personal life and squeeze other people out of theirs It's not in Europe, for example, where we don't think that socialism is a curse word, we think it is necessary for the progress of society as a whole. I will quote one of my favourite computer scientist ever, Joe Armstrong, creator of Erlang, that unfortunately recently passed away. > Yes - happy days. At the time I was working a 6 hour day due to the enlightened Swedish child care policies. Parents of young children are entitled to work 80% of full time - good for creativity and family life. Result 2 kids and a new programming language. source: https://twitter.com/joeerl/status/1067720315151810560 https://twitter.com/joeerl/status/1067720315151810560

johannes1234321 7y ago
> Pre-induistrial workers worked less, on the average, because they were surviving > They were working when they needed money and not working (AKA doing some other job for the house or the family, like farming or breeding cows and pigs) when they had enough to go on for maybe a week or so. Especially they worked depending on the season. During planting or harvest they were on the fields from dawn till dusk. In winter they took care of the animals and stayed by the fire place inside. Manufacturing work had similar cycles. Only industrialisation brought working cycles independent from season and daylight.
- earth2eca 7y ago
  This is a cohesive response. The definition of work is itself a manifestation of industrialization, post-U.S. revolution. Previously, in the teleologically-oriented universe of the Medieval period and early Enlightenment, there was little if any distinction between work and life. Exceptions were for those who sought to become members of Guilds -- the architects, alchemists, millers, bakers and too herbalist apothecaries whose guild was closesly associated to the early Catholic church and later, loosely, with Luther's heresy.

HSO 7y ago

> The 40h a day week and modern-day work contracts come as a direct evolution of medieval servitude, with little modification. Well, in Europe it is more the estate system and urban manufactures, I think, that have influenced the culture of work. In the US, you have something much worse even. I found this recent article eye-opening for me: [1] M. Desmond. In order to understand the brutality of american capitalism, you have to start on the plantation. New York Times Magazine, Aug 18 2019. web: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/08/14/magazine/slavery-capitalism.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/08/14/magazine/slav... > a desperate need for people to continuously prove the need for their own role, as automation and informatization eat away more an more jobs. While I agree with this (go @AndrewYang! ;), I don't think it is the only (or even the biggest) factor. It is the long shadow of WWII and the resulting demographic imbalance coupled with a self-serving but fundamentally wrong narrative around "economic growth". This has led to what some have called "the big institutional lie" where throughout society you have institutions that rely on promises of advancement or necessity to lure the fresh blood but that can not keep these promises to all of them. It's basically a pyramid scheme. Peter Turchin pointed to this as a contributing factor to polarization as the educated "elite" of such countries/societies must increasingly fight among itself for the increasingly rare places or resources (relatively speaking). → revolutionary potential

lotsofpulp 7y ago
>"the big institutional lie” The big lie is all the lavish promises people made to their future selves. Expensive medical treatments (Medicare), retirement funds (social security/pension payments), expensive infrastructure (constant access to clean water/electricity/gas/sewage/etc). Maybe the biggest lie is pretending to be able to predict the future. All those aforementioned promises require future resources, population, growth, technological advances, all of which are just guesses as to what will be available in the future.
- lostjohnny 7y ago
  > Expensive medical treatments Again. Universal healthcare solved that in Europe. It is expensive, but it's a shared cost that benefits everybody. > Maybe the biggest lie is pretending to be able to predict the future Maybe, but back then they didn't have the means to care for more than a few days at a time, to think about the future. If they could have done it, they would have done it.

sgregnt 7y ago

You can open your own business and run it differently, and show everyone how sucessful your approach is.

MichaelMoser123 7y ago

> The 40h a day week and modern-day work contracts come as a direct evolution of medieval servitude, with little modification. Where can i read more about this assertion? I was not aware that serfdom would specify such details as the number of hours. I guess that serfdom would be a very different institution in each country, or even within each province; (I guess corvée service might have been a more detailed contract, but I am not aware of the details) so I would like to hear some more details.

ryanmercer 7y ago
>I was not aware that serfdom would specify such details as the number of hours. I'm not sure they did, but your work day was effectively limited to when the sun was up. Candles were quite expensive well through the middle ages as they were mostly made from beeswax, lower class persons would use fires or candles made from soaking things like rushes in animal fat - neither of which provided light conducive to any sort of work.
- MichaelMoser123 7y ago
  the landlord still had to allow his serfs to work their own plot/cottage on occasion; so they had to agree on some form of time management, even without clocks or candles.
bluntfang 7y ago
>Where can i read more about this assertion? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_history_of_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_history_of_the_United_St... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labour_movement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labour_movement
etripe 7y ago
Bullshit Jobs by David Graeber goes into it tangentially, as part of making a greater point.

dragonwriter 7y ago

> The 40h a day week and modern-day work contracts come as a direct evolution of medieval servitude, with little modification. Not really, they come as rather significant modifications of early capitalist servitude, won at a substantial cost in lives. Early capitalist servitude did itself evolve directly from feudal servitude, but it got much worse, in economic terms, in the process. It usually came with at least notional political freedom, though.

macspoofing 7y ago
>Early capitalist servitude did itself evolve directly from feudal servitude, but it got much worse, in economic terms, in the process. No it didn't. This Roussaunian idealization of rural subsistence living must really die. People aren't idiots, you don't move to urban factory work (as bad as it was compared to modern day) unless rural life was much worse.
- azernik 7y ago
  Standard of living rose by some measures on moving to the cities; however, the dependence on an employer was much greater than the old dependence on your lord.
  - macspoofing 7y ago
    >Standard of living rose by some measures on moving to the cities Some? >the dependence on an employer was much greater than the old dependence on your lord. I'm not sure that's actually true.
  - dragonwriter 7y ago
    > however, the dependence on an employer was much greater than the old dependence on your lord I'm not sure the dependence was much greater, but it was less likely to be honored restart than mercilessly abused by the employer, because capitalism arose in the context of a huge labor surplus created by agricultural productivity revolutions, whereas feudal tenancy arose in tighter labor conditions and had grown traditions (and in some cases legal structures) based on that. Which is not too say that feudalism was without massive abuses of dependent relationships, itself.

JTbane 7y ago

We'd have to work weekends as well, if it were not for religion. Kind of funny, kind of sad.

wolfgke 7y ago

> This explains the system of values that revolve around it, such as for example the notion that it's somewhat something to be ashamed of for an employee to leave its employer, while it's perfectly OK for the employer to terminate the employee at any time. This looks very USA-centric to me. In Germany, the mentality is rather that both directions are to be ashamed of.

conanbatt 7y ago

You don't even imagine how much employers do to favor employees. This jaded view from corporate america, by corporate employees, ignores that the majority of employment comes from small businesses that eat up losses all the time to not lose valuable employees.

macspoofing 7y ago

>The 40h a day week and modern-day work contracts come as a direct evolution of medieval servitude, with little modification. You're claiming the opposite of what the article does. Medieval serfs did not work a 40h week. >This explains the system of values that revolve around it No. >such as for example the notion that it's somewhat something to be ashamed of for an employee to leave its employer, while it's perfectly OK for the employer to terminate the employee at any time. Says who? This is so overbroad that it doesn't actually match reality. Lots of people quit jobs all the time. >The servant was not expected to leave its master, that was not OK. Come on. You have an angle you want to argue but you can't just distort reality to fit your conclusion. Nothing you argued is broadly true, though I'm sure you can find individual examples.

tryitnow 7y ago

It is something to be ashamed of for employees to leave their employers? Where? I've worked in a few places in the US and I never sensed any "shame" when an employee left. I have sensed that employers feel shame when laying people off though. I think the modern wage labor relation is very different than medieval serfdom, on both sides. Marx does a good job of explaining this Kaptial Vol. I. What is the same is the basic exploitation that underlies that relationship. I agree 100% with the rest of what you say though, there are too many people taking BS jobs too seriously.

onlyrealcuzzo 7y ago

At my last company, there were several employees who spent the vast majority of their time trying to convince people their jobs are important. Whether I thought they were or not is kind of irrelevant, but it seems insane to work a job where the majority of your time spent is convincing people it makes sense for you to have a job.

perl4ever 7y ago
At a place I previously worked, I heard a rumor that the entire job of someone who was fairly high up was to email a simple report to someone higher up every day. As someone put it, the job of a crontab entry. Since then, I started a job that was ostensibly non-technical, and it seems like people are overly impressed by anyone who can provide a dashboard style report, and it's as though you're assumed to be putting forth significant effort every time you make a new one. If I was able to act in a more strategic manner, I would not let on that I had automated such things, and soon my entire job would be pushing a button three or four times a day.

JBSay 7y ago

Somehow I don't think you know much about medieval serfdom. While the serf was not allowed to leave neither was the lord allowed kick the serf out of his land. The only way the lord could "fire" a serf was to sell the associated land in which case he would simply become the serf of another lord. By contrast employees are not attached to their place of work and are free to leave. The two systems have nothing in common.

swayvil 7y ago
He was offering that "proving worth to the lord" was fundamental to that psychology. Which fits in with your scenario just fine.
- JBSay 7y ago
  That's the point. A serf didn't have to prove his worth. An employee does.
  - swayvil 7y ago
    A serf who can't prove his worth get beatings and demotions. Ultimately death.
    - JBSay 7y ago
      Do yourself a favour and open a history book.
      - swayvil 7y ago
        I admit it, I was talking from my vast experience with Braveheart.
      - swayvil 7y ago
        How does a lord ensure that his serfs perform?

damq 7y ago

> the notion that it's somewhat something to be ashamed of for an employee to leave its employer, while it's perfectly OK for the employer to terminate the employee at any time. Did you just make this up? The stigma is the exact opposite. Western society makes it quite difficult to fire employees. Hell, it's even illegal to fire striking employees. You'd be hard-pressed to find any employer willing to fire an employee without thoroughly documented evidence of the employee's malfeasance. The only time anybody gets fired is when they really really deserved it. In contrast, many employees leave their jobs capriciously with little to no consequence.

bobwaycott 7y ago
You appear to live in quite the bubble if you really believe this with absolute certainty. > Western society makes it quite difficult to fire employees. Have you worked in a US "right-to-work" state? It's incredibly easy to fire people. Large companies are typically the only businesses that bother with "thoroughly documented evidence of the employee's malfeasance". And even that is rare. > You'd be hard-pressed to find any employer willing to fire an employee without thoroughly documented evidence of the employee's malfeasance. The only time anybody gets fired is when they really really deserved it. I'm just a single data point. I'm a bit of a workaholic. I'm also a perfectionist. And I'm someone who always busts his ass at every job. In the last 20 years in TN, I have encountered the following occasions: - During college, I worked part-time at Books-a-Million in their little cafe. I had the laziest, most unreliable cafe "manager" I've ever met—she would regularly be 30+ minutes late to shifts, causing me to be late to classes and events; she would constantly offload managerial tasks to me when we shared a shift; she would spend vast majorities of her shifts talking on the phone with family and friends; she wouldn't respond to customers at the counter if I was busy (because she was on the phone), and would ignore them waiting for me to get to them; when I would follow her shifts, she never spent any time at all cleaning up after herself, and left the entire area a fucking mess; the list goes on. When Spring Break hit, I'd had a pre-approved vacation on the books for nearly 3 months—a road trip to Chicago with friends. My ride showed up 15 minutes before my shift ended and came in for a coffee to wait for me to be relieved by the manager. One hour later, I finally called the manager. She was at home watching TV (yes, she told me that directly). I asked if she was aware she was supposed to be relieving me so I could leave for vacation, and she said yes. I told her my ride had been waiting for over an hour by this point, and needed to leave because it was a long drive. She complained about having to work on a Saturday. Said she guessed she'd go get in the shower and start getting ready for work. I decided I'd had enough of this behavior after nearly 1 year—I told her that I would be leaving in 30 minutes whether she was there or not. And since she's the manager, an 18-yr-old kid shouldn't be displaying more responsibility, reliability, and dedication to his part-time job than she, as a 30-something, gave to her full-time job. Then I thanked her and hung up. I then wrote all this up in the cafe log book—a book we were supposed to write important notes for store management in that they would review daily. She showed up right at 30 minutes later, and I left. Upon returning from the vacation, she called and asked if I'd come in and cover a shift for her. I agreed. Upon arriving at the store, she was there, and she and the store manager told me I was fired for insubordination. I had expected it, of course, but that's beside the point. I'm sure I really really deserved to be the one fired in that situation, right? - Nearly 20 years ago, I was fired from Best Buy. I'd worked there for somewhere close to 9 months, I think. Never missed a day. Even walked to work after my clutch went out on the interstate. The day before departing for an approved vacation, I declined the female store manager's advances and being asked out. The day I returned, I was asked to sign a document declaring that the reason for my firing was poor job performance and missing work. My direct manager on the pre-Geek Squad declined to sign the form—telling me privately afterward there was no way he could sign such a statement because he absolutely depended on me and was now fucked without a replacement—but wouldn't you know it ... lucky for Best Buy there was a store manager who was happy to do it. I declined to sign the form, informing them I'd happily sign a form that declared I was being fired after declining to go out with a superior. They declined to provide such a form, so I wrote it myself on their form, after striking through their bullshit reason, and signed that statement. But again, surely I really really deserved being fired there. - 17 years ago, I worked as a temp worker with Randstad for Maytag in one of their customer service centers. It was a pretty easy job—just take calls all day and help people figure out appliance problems. One day, Maytag announced they were moving a US factory to Renosa, Mexico. There were quite a few jobs being lost. That night, at home, on my personal computer, I was doing some research into US companies moving factories to Mexico. There was a particular organization in Texas that helped facilitate such moves who mentioned working with Maytag on their website. They had a form on their site you could fill out for more information, or to ask questions. So, I filled out the form—asked some specific questions about working conditions, average pay rates of Mexican workers compared to US workers, time to spin up factories, worker treatment, and a few other things. I put my name, email, and phone number in the form. There was an input that asked where I worked that was required—so I just typed in Maytag without thinking and moved on. The next morning, I arrived at my desk to a couple managers waiting for me. Followed them into the office, where they showed me a printout of the form I had filled out the night before on my personal computer at home. All the questions I'd asked. They asked what I thought I was doing. I simply explained—in absolute honesty—I was very curious about how factory moves work, how workers are treated and paid in Mexico, especially compared to union workers at Maytag's existing US factories, and had found that site saying they could provide such information. They told me I was a customer service rep and had no business looking into such matters, and then informed me I was being fired for impersonating Maytag company personnel and misrepresenting their interests. But, of course, I really really deserved it. > Hell, it's even illegal to fire striking employees. - Oh, this is a funny one. About 15 years ago, I was fired after getting involved with union organizing, and sharing some literature and discussing unions with my coworkers. This was in a factory, where part of the employees were already unionized, but the company was subcontracting jobs out to cheaper, non-union workers like me. I mean, it's supposed to be illegal to fire someone for union organizing. Ah, the beauty of a right-to-work state—where every employee is an at-will employee, and you can pretty much make up any excuse to fire them. But alas, I'm sure I really really deserved it. I moved into sales for a few years after that, and did really well. Then I finally decided to put my computer skills to use as a software developer 12 years ago—and subsequently turned that into running my own business for the last 7 or 8 years. The tech world has been quite different—though there are still plenty of issues that could be improved. However, the lessons of my years of "normal" employment were quite clear—in right-to-work states, it's absolutely okay for employers to terminate any employee, any time, for any reason. Real reasons. Utter bullshit reasons. It doesn't matter. The employer has all the power, and the employee has to just take it or lose their job and income.

goto11 7y ago

> The 40h a day week and modern-day work contracts come as a direct evolution of medieval servitude, with little modification. Edgy. But also deeply ignorant of history. Servitude means you can't quit your job. That is a pretty significant modification!

papito 7y ago
A lot of people can't. They will literally not be able to pay bills.
- chaostheory 7y ago
  Most people need a job. That's not the same as being unable to switch employers, or being unable to move to a better market.

papito 7y ago

When you are on your deathbed, your first thought will not be "man, I wished I had worked more".

1000units 7y ago

It has everything to do with power. You don't even need to consult the history. Large organizations very rarely need any particular drone. The drones always need money to survive, their health insurance, stability for their family, a clean professional reputation. So the big guys takes advantage of the little guys. Early in my career, I worked a lot and was compensated poorly for the value I brought to the business. Then I built systems that made me very difficult to get rid of without losing all the money I was bringing in. Now I make double and work 30 hours a week when I'm busy. For any reasonably large corporation, your employer is not your friend. They deserve professional courtesy, but never loyalty or personal respect. Always look out for yourself, what you bring to the table, and what you're getting out of it. Forget anything else. If you want something personal, go home to your wife and kids at a reasonable hour. They love you.