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The only issue here is that many of the employees in question can likewise afford a weekly cleaner, to have groceries delivered and cooked meals delivered regul

The only issue here is that many of the employees in question can likewise afford a weekly cleaner, to have groceries delivered and cooked meals delivered regularly. They can also live close to the office if they wish. I think the issue is just that fundamental difference between what the work of relevant people comprises -- moreso than class. Managers, executives, and so on are "social workers": their job is to align people, brainstorm ideas, communicate, "govern" etc. "Knowledge workers" job is, in large part, to think alone, then to create alone -- and when that fails seek some minimal intervention by another knowledge worker to resolve an issue. "The Office" is not well-designed for knowledge work -- it's design for "social work". It's born of an era when manual workers worked in factories, and "social workers" worked in offices -- and "knowledge workers" were in academia, in the basement or some hidden (, silent) back office. Reducing this to class seems to miss the point. Will anyone ever just recognise what the job of creative knowledge work is? Is it so incomprehensible? In the quest to "comprehend" it, we're told its our lack of maids which burden us so. It's kinda laughable. A maid is no help if you won't STFU.

jack_riminton 2y ago
This is really well put. Those who's main job is email, meetings and the occassional spreadsheet can't understand why those who do something technical must have significant time alone to work through a problem
- mjburgess 2y ago
  HN seems to prefer treating this is a failure to empathise with home-life, rather than work-life. The almost rich are, as ever, incensed.
mananaysiempre 2y ago
You unintentionally strike at the heart of why I’m never completely on board with these anti-office discussions. Commute sucks, cubicles are worse than useless; you won’t get any argument from me on either of these. But I also know how crucial it is for academia to talk with colleagues. Email kind of works. Video calls kind of work a bit more. But nothing beats knocking on the door of the office next to you. (Whether it’s polite to announce yourself by e.g. email first depends on the country; even if you just show up and you’re turned away, that’ll be until lunch or at worst until the next day.) And the post-seminar atmosphere of everybody talking chaotically to each other with their minds buzzing as others put away their papers, chairs, etc., thus far stays unreplicated by any technological means. I guess what I want to say is, the more speculative your ideas are, the more important it becomes to bounce them off people in spontaneous conversation. And any friction (scheduling, calls, etc.) you add will significantly reduce the amount of spontaneous conversation you are going to have. So far, we haven’t figured out a better way than roughly everybody involved being in roughly the same place roughly all the time. That saddens me, given how much I hate commuting.
- mjburgess 2y ago
  I suspect if office workers had offices, we'd be in quite a different situation. There's a certain sort of knowledge worker who wants to impress upon the others how communal, conversational, and social their job "really is!" --- but these are people who are likewise not empathetic with the managerial class. All you're really saying is in 20 hours of thinking a week, and 20 hours of typing --- some 2 with others might really help. I don't disagree. The problem is the "social work" class do not have very much to think about -- their job is to align very rudimentary thoughts from a pool of people who need to negotiate their positions. The Grand Plan of an executive-type is a search through a paddling pool of combinatorial options. This isn't to trivialise the work, so much to point out its an operational and socio-logistical task. Yes, conversing with one's knowledge-worker peers can speed things up a lot, advance ideas and the like. I am here only analysing where the gap in empathy lies -- I do not really think it's people who can well-afford maids (pretending they cannot) being misunderstood by people with private jets
  - milesrout 2y ago
    Approaching this from the perspective that other people only care about socially signalling how social their job is will not get you anywhere. It might feel good and make good rhetoric to make such wide generalisations but it doesn't get you any closer to the truth and cuts you off from seeing things through others' perspectives. 20 houes of thinking, 20 hours of typing, and 2 hours of collaborating is just a bizarre numericalisation of something that probably cannot be quantified. How much time you spend on something doesn't tell you it is more or less important anyway. What percentage of the time do you spend coding vs committing and pushing? Yet if you didnt do the latter, the former would be a total waste of time. The small amount of time (even conceding it is small, which it isnt necessarily) you spend on collaboration might be a force multiplier that makes the rest of your time far more valuable. >The problem is the "social work" class do not have very much to think about -- their job is to align very rudimentary thoughts from a pool of people who need to negotiate their positions. This is frankly insane. You don't actually think this, surely? Surely this is just rhetoric? This has nothing to do with maids or private jets. Plenty of businesses want their workers in the office including those where the business owners and managers cannot afford private jets or maids.

jack_riminton 2y ago

This is really well put. Those who's main job is email, meetings and the occassional spreadsheet can't understand why those who do something technical must have significant time alone to work through a problem

mjburgess 2y ago
HN seems to prefer treating this is a failure to empathise with home-life, rather than work-life. The almost rich are, as ever, incensed.

mananaysiempre 2y ago

You unintentionally strike at the heart of why I’m never completely on board with these anti-office discussions. Commute sucks, cubicles are worse than useless; you won’t get any argument from me on either of these. But I also know how crucial it is for academia to talk with colleagues. Email kind of works. Video calls kind of work a bit more. But nothing beats knocking on the door of the office next to you. (Whether it’s polite to announce yourself by e.g. email first depends on the country; even if you just show up and you’re turned away, that’ll be until lunch or at worst until the next day.) And the post-seminar atmosphere of everybody talking chaotically to each other with their minds buzzing as others put away their papers, chairs, etc., thus far stays unreplicated by any technological means. I guess what I want to say is, the more speculative your ideas are, the more important it becomes to bounce them off people in spontaneous conversation. And any friction (scheduling, calls, etc.) you add will significantly reduce the amount of spontaneous conversation you are going to have. So far, we haven’t figured out a better way than roughly everybody involved being in roughly the same place roughly all the time. That saddens me, given how much I hate commuting.

mjburgess 2y ago
I suspect if office workers had offices, we'd be in quite a different situation. There's a certain sort of knowledge worker who wants to impress upon the others how communal, conversational, and social their job "really is!" --- but these are people who are likewise not empathetic with the managerial class. All you're really saying is in 20 hours of thinking a week, and 20 hours of typing --- some 2 with others might really help. I don't disagree. The problem is the "social work" class do not have very much to think about -- their job is to align very rudimentary thoughts from a pool of people who need to negotiate their positions. The Grand Plan of an executive-type is a search through a paddling pool of combinatorial options. This isn't to trivialise the work, so much to point out its an operational and socio-logistical task. Yes, conversing with one's knowledge-worker peers can speed things up a lot, advance ideas and the like. I am here only analysing where the gap in empathy lies -- I do not really think it's people who can well-afford maids (pretending they cannot) being misunderstood by people with private jets
- milesrout 2y ago
  Approaching this from the perspective that other people only care about socially signalling how social their job is will not get you anywhere. It might feel good and make good rhetoric to make such wide generalisations but it doesn't get you any closer to the truth and cuts you off from seeing things through others' perspectives. 20 houes of thinking, 20 hours of typing, and 2 hours of collaborating is just a bizarre numericalisation of something that probably cannot be quantified. How much time you spend on something doesn't tell you it is more or less important anyway. What percentage of the time do you spend coding vs committing and pushing? Yet if you didnt do the latter, the former would be a total waste of time. The small amount of time (even conceding it is small, which it isnt necessarily) you spend on collaboration might be a force multiplier that makes the rest of your time far more valuable. >The problem is the "social work" class do not have very much to think about -- their job is to align very rudimentary thoughts from a pool of people who need to negotiate their positions. This is frankly insane. You don't actually think this, surely? Surely this is just rhetoric? This has nothing to do with maids or private jets. Plenty of businesses want their workers in the office including those where the business owners and managers cannot afford private jets or maids.