4 ms·

There is a reason unions use "work to rule": it shuts the company down. So when they say > Turn up on time. Do your job. Do it right. Do whatever is asked of y

There is a reason unions use "work to rule": it shuts the company down. So when they say > Turn up on time. Do your job. Do it right. Do whatever is asked of you provided it's lawful, reasonable. [...] Do not one thing more than that. they are essentially saying do nothing that is not asked of you; that is to say, do nothing that requires agency on your part. That's not something that organizationally companies are able to afford. As an individual worker, that strategy probably will work in keeping your job, at least in good times. That's not to say it'd be a fulfilling job--I need some sense of personal agency at work for happiness, but plenty of people don't--but it satisfies the goal of maximizing income while minimizing stress. But if that attitude becomes more widespread than it already is, companies will then create or prioritize jobs categories that assume no agency on the part of employees. These jobs are both more depressing, more subject to automation, and lower paying than the ones that expect personal agency.

Ycombigatorz 4y ago
pydry 4y ago
>But if that attitude becomes more widespread than it already is, companies will then create or prioritize jobs categories that assume no agency on the part of employees. These jobs are both more depressing, more subject to automation, and lower paying than the ones that expect personal agency. Companies have a strong preference for this kind of job. They need no additional encouragement to create them and havent since the beginning of the 19th century. Ironically, I think they tend to be a lot less subject to automation even if the companies clearly want it more. Amazon automates the hell out of its warehouses and for the remaining tasks it tries to robotize humans.
- scarmig 4y ago
  > Companies have a strong preference for this kind of job. They need no additional encouragement to create them and havent since the beginning of the 19th century. They might prefer it, but there are always tradeoffs. The equilibrium we are at now has a certain proportion of agentful jobs. In a world where hiring for them is riskier than the world we have, at the margin companies will shift away from them toward agentless jobs. > I think they tend to be a lot less subject to automation even if the companies clearly want it more. Companies generally prefer humans over automation. Automation is a capex; humans are an opex. Automation runs the risk of flagrant failure; humans can fill in gaps in rulesets and ignore or modify bad ones on the fly to get work done. Automation requires complete legibility into the problem space; humans have private knowledge that is often essential to the problem. As of now, we don't have automated systems that can exhibit agency. Deconstructing jobs into ones that require agency for smaller and smaller problems makes automation much more tractable, because you've already done a lot of the work. I do agree that we're likely to build systems that can exhibit agency before we get to the point where robots can perform as well in the physical domain as humans do; radiologists are more at risk in the near term than nurses.

Ycombigatorz 4y ago

pydry 4y ago

>But if that attitude becomes more widespread than it already is, companies will then create or prioritize jobs categories that assume no agency on the part of employees. These jobs are both more depressing, more subject to automation, and lower paying than the ones that expect personal agency. Companies have a strong preference for this kind of job. They need no additional encouragement to create them and havent since the beginning of the 19th century. Ironically, I think they tend to be a lot less subject to automation even if the companies clearly want it more. Amazon automates the hell out of its warehouses and for the remaining tasks it tries to robotize humans.

scarmig 4y ago
> Companies have a strong preference for this kind of job. They need no additional encouragement to create them and havent since the beginning of the 19th century. They might prefer it, but there are always tradeoffs. The equilibrium we are at now has a certain proportion of agentful jobs. In a world where hiring for them is riskier than the world we have, at the margin companies will shift away from them toward agentless jobs. > I think they tend to be a lot less subject to automation even if the companies clearly want it more. Companies generally prefer humans over automation. Automation is a capex; humans are an opex. Automation runs the risk of flagrant failure; humans can fill in gaps in rulesets and ignore or modify bad ones on the fly to get work done. Automation requires complete legibility into the problem space; humans have private knowledge that is often essential to the problem. As of now, we don't have automated systems that can exhibit agency. Deconstructing jobs into ones that require agency for smaller and smaller problems makes automation much more tractable, because you've already done a lot of the work. I do agree that we're likely to build systems that can exhibit agency before we get to the point where robots can perform as well in the physical domain as humans do; radiologists are more at risk in the near term than nurses.