4 ms·

I often wonder if we really need(ed) to change everything to it's current state. What if we still had fax machines and photocopiers and non-networked IBM PCs in

I often wonder if we really need(ed) to change everything to it's current state. What if we still had fax machines and photocopiers and non-networked IBM PCs in the office? I mean we could run a business like that in the 80s, why not now? It seems like we're in a race and constantly accelerate but does it make sense? Don't get me wrong, I understand that it makes economic sense to be faster and cheaper than the competition. I also don't mind many of the nice goodies we have nowadays and the progress in medicine etc.. However, I feel like working was more humanely paced back then. It's also possible that I'm just getting old and / or tired (I also suffer from depression and whatnot) which makes me think so fondly of the past. E.g. the company I'm working at now, they had folder filled with documentation and there were people actually thinking about how the things should work and how some meaningful innovation could be done. Nowadays documentation spread in different versions in numerous teams channels, sharepoint pages, jira, confluence, network shares, git repositories etc. it's really hard to find anything. Lot's of features are being added to the products but without knowing how they're actually being used by the customers, many of them being completely impractical or irrelevant in real life...

Aerbil313 3y ago
Anti-technologism would gladly welcome you. See the book Technological Slavery by Dr. Skrbina (available online).
Mizoguchi 3y ago
I have experienced exactly the opposite, I feel my work has become a lot easier today than two decades ago. Back in the day remote access to customer infrastructure was non existent, so you had to travel a lot and spend countless hours on the phone. Working with teams overseas was also challenging, there was no Teams, Zoom or Discord, the best you could hope for was Messenger (then Skype) or trying to get everyone on a call. But most of the stuff was done over email, which is a terrible tool for synchronous communications. Documentation has become easier to maintain as well. I agree that many companies are overwhelmed with technology and many of the processes have become redundant, but that's mostly due to poor design and implementation. A good document management system, good standards and training really improves documentation. We stopped using network shares for documentation about three years ago. All of our development,dms,collaboration and communication tools are on Azure. Not all are perfect and we miss some functionality by being locked out with MS but they all integrate pretty well for the most part. We recently got rid of the last few line phones in our offices and we are all now 100% on Teams for external communications as well. As for the human part, that's something really subjective. I keep my social life almost completely disconnected from work, and although I enjoy the monthly happy hour with colleagues and small talk in the office sometimes, I don't have any personal desire of having human interactions at work.
- MichaelZuo 3y ago
  > But most of the stuff was done over email, which is a terrible tool for synchronous communications. I've heard this a lot but don't get this complaint. Email wasn't designed to be, meant to be, or supposed to be used as a tool for synchronous communication. So of course it's terrible at it. The point of email as a tool is to satisfy other goals. It's an excellent replacement for FAX, snail mail letters, etc... Conference calls, video calls, face-to-face meetings are the tools meant for synchronous communication. 'Chat' tools are completely unnecessary. It's there to satisfy the perceived demands of the workforce but might actually be net negative as several commenters pointed out here.
dahwolf 3y ago
I hear you. I recently had a colleague retire after a lifetime in the company and he described in detail how over the course of his career, work had gotten increasingly impersonal, fleeting, unrewarding. It was painful to hear.

Aerbil313 3y ago

Anti-technologism would gladly welcome you. See the book Technological Slavery by Dr. Skrbina (available online).

Mizoguchi 3y ago

I have experienced exactly the opposite, I feel my work has become a lot easier today than two decades ago. Back in the day remote access to customer infrastructure was non existent, so you had to travel a lot and spend countless hours on the phone. Working with teams overseas was also challenging, there was no Teams, Zoom or Discord, the best you could hope for was Messenger (then Skype) or trying to get everyone on a call. But most of the stuff was done over email, which is a terrible tool for synchronous communications. Documentation has become easier to maintain as well. I agree that many companies are overwhelmed with technology and many of the processes have become redundant, but that's mostly due to poor design and implementation. A good document management system, good standards and training really improves documentation. We stopped using network shares for documentation about three years ago. All of our development,dms,collaboration and communication tools are on Azure. Not all are perfect and we miss some functionality by being locked out with MS but they all integrate pretty well for the most part. We recently got rid of the last few line phones in our offices and we are all now 100% on Teams for external communications as well. As for the human part, that's something really subjective. I keep my social life almost completely disconnected from work, and although I enjoy the monthly happy hour with colleagues and small talk in the office sometimes, I don't have any personal desire of having human interactions at work.

MichaelZuo 3y ago
> But most of the stuff was done over email, which is a terrible tool for synchronous communications. I've heard this a lot but don't get this complaint. Email wasn't designed to be, meant to be, or supposed to be used as a tool for synchronous communication. So of course it's terrible at it. The point of email as a tool is to satisfy other goals. It's an excellent replacement for FAX, snail mail letters, etc... Conference calls, video calls, face-to-face meetings are the tools meant for synchronous communication. 'Chat' tools are completely unnecessary. It's there to satisfy the perceived demands of the workforce but might actually be net negative as several commenters pointed out here.

dahwolf 3y ago

I hear you. I recently had a colleague retire after a lifetime in the company and he described in detail how over the course of his career, work had gotten increasingly impersonal, fleeting, unrewarding. It was painful to hear.