7 ms·

Nope. Don't believe it, it's another hubris-heavy article from Forbes. Sadly, for most people in the world, the future of work is more likely to be 9-9-6. Cloc

Nope. Don't believe it, it's another hubris-heavy article from Forbes. Sadly, for most people in the world, the future of work is more likely to be 9-9-6. Clock in at 9am, leave at 9pm. Repeat 6 days a week, for the rest of your life until you can't work and no social safety net other than your family. This is what your overlords want.

echelon 5y ago
Possible. Companies and countries that do this will have cheaper labor and lower cost of goods. TikTok has a 996 culture and is killing Facebook. The only way out of this is through automation or potentially economic protectionism.
- gsich 5y ago
  Automation hasn't saved us before.
- robjan 5y ago
  TikTok is killing Facebook because it's a more compelling product, not because the engineers are overworked.
  - disgruntledphd2 5y ago
    It is now. Facebook was a killer product back in 2007 (and probably until recently, it still was). The inevitable fate of TikTok is to become more like FB than different, assuming that they are successful, because of the business model commonalities.
- arrosenberg 5y ago
  There's no way that they're beating Facebook because they make their employees work 72 hours a week. Any one who has worked 70+ hour weeks knows that your productivity drops off a cliff and never shows back up.
- occz 5y ago
  > TikTok has a 996 culture and is killing Facebook. Because of, or despite?
tyrust 5y ago
I think this is a blog post, not an article. They've really ruined any reputation that they might have once had by muddling the difference.
- xnx 5y ago
  Thank you for pointing this out. Every single time I see a forbes.com page posted, I see other people in the HN comments who clearly do not recognize this.
- tom_mellior 5y ago
  Newspapers have always had opinion sections.
  - tyrust 5y ago
    True, but in my experience they are always clearly labeled as such. Whereas Forbes makes the difference non-obvious, as evidenced by commenters on Forbes opinion pieces often saying "Forbes says $thing" rather than "$blogger says $thing".
amelius 5y ago
The economy works against us, not in favor of us. For example, we went from households with one breadwinner to two. What did it bring us? Did we get more free time? Nope. Cost of housing and living in general increased. That's what we got.
- thechao 5y ago
  We went from households where everyone worked 12+ hours a day, to a tiny chunk of the world population could get by with a single income household, to a dual-income system. Mid-century America was an anomaly. I’m not saying it shouldn’t be a goal to have no/one income households; sounds great for QOL, but let’s not ignore the bulk of history & humanity.
- clairity 5y ago
  it goosed economic productivity, which is what those positioned to capitalize on it (pun intended) wanted. what it didn’t do is bring the holistic prosperity that was promised, because that really wasn’t wanted despite the rhetoric. it’s time to insist on fairness and dignity for work, not try to devalue work further by trying to minimize it, which plays right into the hands of capital.
- klyrs 5y ago
  This assumes that the non-breadwinner did not work. In the vast majority, the second party, almost always a wife, was busy homemaking -- toiling from sunup to sundown tending children, making labor-intensive meals, cleaning, doing laundry, making clothes, growing and preserving food, etc. Did they get paid for their 12-hour workday? No. They significantly enabled the breadwinner to specialize in his field, but only he is seen as contributing to the economy. Today, we've got machines to do the dishes and the laundry, refrigeration, and foreign slaves / wage-slaves to make our clothes and crops. Homemaking is less labor intensive today, and what could be more leisure time has been replaced with two-income houses. And, for example, my great grandma was both a housewife and she had a job at a sweatshop. The single-income household wasn't really an option for the poor in the 40s, and I suspect that it's only been broadly available to the upper class.
  - 5y ago
zbrozek 5y ago
Indeed. And much of that 996 time will be a total waste of lifespan - too-big meetings with no outcome, creation of presentations with no purpose, over-thinking decisions where random chance would be just as good. Or incessant internal propaganda all-hands performances. Inefficient work culture is just another contributor to Western cost disease.
pmoriarty 5y ago
Compare this Forbes fantasy to the reality reported by Vox: "Bosses are acting like the pandemic never happened"[1] The sad fact of the matter is that most of the people who run things really don't give a shit about their workers, as long as they get rich. Which is why I'm constantly amazed at there being any worker protections and limited working hours at all. Laws like that are the only thing that gives me any glimmer of hope at all. [1] - https://www.vox.com/22455058/jobs-restaurants-office-employers-covid-pandemic-work https://www.vox.com/22455058/jobs-restaurants-office-employe...
minikites 5y ago
We can avert this future if we unionize. Labor unions are the only way to extract fair treatment from executives and boardrooms.
- clairity 5y ago
  unions don’t alter the dynamics that cause downward pressure on work, which are the lopsided labor market dynamics that greatly advantage corporations over the individual (as well as over customers, by the way). we need to make labor markets radically transparent and promote worker mobility over corporate flexibility, at the very least. (my last startup venture was in this space)
  - minikites 5y ago
    >promote worker mobility I agree, the best ways to do that include providing universal healthcare and basic income to all citizens, which would separate "work" from "survival". That's the only way I see to create a truly fair marketplace for work.
    - tolbish 5y ago
      Okay, so how do you convince corporations/lobbyists/politicians to support this? Appealing to their kindness and decency? Or through more realistic ways like inception?
      - minikites 5y ago
        We don't need to "convince" any of them. The nice part about a democracy is that if enough people decide that this is important, we can elect politicians who already support it, then they can make laws which corporations and lobbyists have to follow.
    - clairity 5y ago
      like so much in our economy, healthcare suffers from the same poor market dynamics as the labor market. being tied to full employment is only one of its ills (it need not necessarily be universal, but rather universally affordable). the healthcare market is extractive and collusive rather than competitive and fair. we must fix those things first, largely through political pressure and policy changes (like tax reform and eliminating distortive subsidies). otherwise, it remains extractive and collusive and wealth keeps funneling to the same poor allocators of capital and away from working folks who are collectively good allocators of capital (via ‘wisdom of crowds’). good capital allocation instills competition, drives down prices, and incentivizes real innovation (vs. the financial/legal kind). ubi would do something similar. it could never be big enough to change systemic issues, so would result in a funneling of the distributed wealth back to the capital holders, with no structural change other than inflation and rents going up. so there’s no magic bullet. we need to make thousands of policy changes, all aimed at making markets fair and competitive foremost.
xnx 5y ago
Regular reminder that forbes.com is blogging platform open to anyone just like medium.com, blogger.com, etc. Articles posted there should not be given any default credibility boost.
rantwasp 5y ago
this sounds amazing. where do i sign up and get assigned my serial number?
dennis_jeeves 5y ago
>This is what your overlords want. Good to see a healthy dose of reality.
- crispyambulance 5y ago
  OK, but it was a deliberately flippant remark with a grain of truth.
  - dennis_jeeves 5y ago
    I know, It's hard not to be flippant with the crowd over here. (sometimes I wonder what their background is, It looks like it's a bunch where their parents were from a poor socio-economic backgrounds, so that in their view when both couples are working for 40 hrs a week and paying off a mortgage is seen as 'progress' )

echelon 5y ago

Possible. Companies and countries that do this will have cheaper labor and lower cost of goods. TikTok has a 996 culture and is killing Facebook. The only way out of this is through automation or potentially economic protectionism.

gsich 5y ago
Automation hasn't saved us before.
robjan 5y ago
TikTok is killing Facebook because it's a more compelling product, not because the engineers are overworked.
- disgruntledphd2 5y ago
  It is now. Facebook was a killer product back in 2007 (and probably until recently, it still was). The inevitable fate of TikTok is to become more like FB than different, assuming that they are successful, because of the business model commonalities.
arrosenberg 5y ago
There's no way that they're beating Facebook because they make their employees work 72 hours a week. Any one who has worked 70+ hour weeks knows that your productivity drops off a cliff and never shows back up.
occz 5y ago
> TikTok has a 996 culture and is killing Facebook. Because of, or despite?

tyrust 5y ago

I think this is a blog post, not an article. They've really ruined any reputation that they might have once had by muddling the difference.

xnx 5y ago
Thank you for pointing this out. Every single time I see a forbes.com page posted, I see other people in the HN comments who clearly do not recognize this.
tom_mellior 5y ago
Newspapers have always had opinion sections.
- tyrust 5y ago
  True, but in my experience they are always clearly labeled as such. Whereas Forbes makes the difference non-obvious, as evidenced by commenters on Forbes opinion pieces often saying "Forbes says $thing" rather than "$blogger says $thing".

amelius 5y ago

The economy works against us, not in favor of us. For example, we went from households with one breadwinner to two. What did it bring us? Did we get more free time? Nope. Cost of housing and living in general increased. That's what we got.

thechao 5y ago
We went from households where everyone worked 12+ hours a day, to a tiny chunk of the world population could get by with a single income household, to a dual-income system. Mid-century America was an anomaly. I’m not saying it shouldn’t be a goal to have no/one income households; sounds great for QOL, but let’s not ignore the bulk of history & humanity.
clairity 5y ago
it goosed economic productivity, which is what those positioned to capitalize on it (pun intended) wanted. what it didn’t do is bring the holistic prosperity that was promised, because that really wasn’t wanted despite the rhetoric. it’s time to insist on fairness and dignity for work, not try to devalue work further by trying to minimize it, which plays right into the hands of capital.
klyrs 5y ago
This assumes that the non-breadwinner did not work. In the vast majority, the second party, almost always a wife, was busy homemaking -- toiling from sunup to sundown tending children, making labor-intensive meals, cleaning, doing laundry, making clothes, growing and preserving food, etc. Did they get paid for their 12-hour workday? No. They significantly enabled the breadwinner to specialize in his field, but only he is seen as contributing to the economy. Today, we've got machines to do the dishes and the laundry, refrigeration, and foreign slaves / wage-slaves to make our clothes and crops. Homemaking is less labor intensive today, and what could be more leisure time has been replaced with two-income houses. And, for example, my great grandma was both a housewife and she had a job at a sweatshop. The single-income household wasn't really an option for the poor in the 40s, and I suspect that it's only been broadly available to the upper class.
- 5y ago

zbrozek 5y ago

Indeed. And much of that 996 time will be a total waste of lifespan - too-big meetings with no outcome, creation of presentations with no purpose, over-thinking decisions where random chance would be just as good. Or incessant internal propaganda all-hands performances. Inefficient work culture is just another contributor to Western cost disease.

pmoriarty 5y ago

Compare this Forbes fantasy to the reality reported by Vox: "Bosses are acting like the pandemic never happened"[1] The sad fact of the matter is that most of the people who run things really don't give a shit about their workers, as long as they get rich. Which is why I'm constantly amazed at there being any worker protections and limited working hours at all. Laws like that are the only thing that gives me any glimmer of hope at all. [1] - https://www.vox.com/22455058/jobs-restaurants-office-employers-covid-pandemic-work https://www.vox.com/22455058/jobs-restaurants-office-employe...

minikites 5y ago

We can avert this future if we unionize. Labor unions are the only way to extract fair treatment from executives and boardrooms.

clairity 5y ago
unions don’t alter the dynamics that cause downward pressure on work, which are the lopsided labor market dynamics that greatly advantage corporations over the individual (as well as over customers, by the way). we need to make labor markets radically transparent and promote worker mobility over corporate flexibility, at the very least. (my last startup venture was in this space)
- minikites 5y ago
  >promote worker mobility I agree, the best ways to do that include providing universal healthcare and basic income to all citizens, which would separate "work" from "survival". That's the only way I see to create a truly fair marketplace for work.
  - tolbish 5y ago
    Okay, so how do you convince corporations/lobbyists/politicians to support this? Appealing to their kindness and decency? Or through more realistic ways like inception?
    - minikites 5y ago
      We don't need to "convince" any of them. The nice part about a democracy is that if enough people decide that this is important, we can elect politicians who already support it, then they can make laws which corporations and lobbyists have to follow.
  - clairity 5y ago
    like so much in our economy, healthcare suffers from the same poor market dynamics as the labor market. being tied to full employment is only one of its ills (it need not necessarily be universal, but rather universally affordable). the healthcare market is extractive and collusive rather than competitive and fair. we must fix those things first, largely through political pressure and policy changes (like tax reform and eliminating distortive subsidies). otherwise, it remains extractive and collusive and wealth keeps funneling to the same poor allocators of capital and away from working folks who are collectively good allocators of capital (via ‘wisdom of crowds’). good capital allocation instills competition, drives down prices, and incentivizes real innovation (vs. the financial/legal kind). ubi would do something similar. it could never be big enough to change systemic issues, so would result in a funneling of the distributed wealth back to the capital holders, with no structural change other than inflation and rents going up. so there’s no magic bullet. we need to make thousands of policy changes, all aimed at making markets fair and competitive foremost.

xnx 5y ago

Regular reminder that forbes.com is blogging platform open to anyone just like medium.com, blogger.com, etc. Articles posted there should not be given any default credibility boost.

rantwasp 5y ago

this sounds amazing. where do i sign up and get assigned my serial number?

dennis_jeeves 5y ago

>This is what your overlords want. Good to see a healthy dose of reality.

crispyambulance 5y ago
OK, but it was a deliberately flippant remark with a grain of truth.
- dennis_jeeves 5y ago
  I know, It's hard not to be flippant with the crowd over here. (sometimes I wonder what their background is, It looks like it's a bunch where their parents were from a poor socio-economic backgrounds, so that in their view when both couples are working for 40 hrs a week and paying off a mortgage is seen as 'progress' )