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> Corporations have a fiduciary responsibility to get as much work out of employees for as little compensation as is practical. Only in the current backwards m

by Guvante 13y ago

> Corporations have a fiduciary responsibility to get as much work out of employees for as little compensation as is practical. Only in the current backwards mindset that your employees are an expense. Properly managed people are capable of amazing things, and can be turned into an asset easily. In theory the prevalence of white collar work should make this easier, but the stock market has turned everyone into thinking of just the next quarter. And honestly you will never get a raise out of an employee in the first quarter.

waps 13y ago
Only for unsolved problems, and only if you can actually afford it (both mostly mean competition is limited or non-existant). Otherwise, that won't work. It's a matter of time (decades, probably, but limited) until IT work turns into that as well. There was a time when helpdesk work was a well-paid satisfying job. Unions were merely a consequence of effectively 100% employment, and a pretty horrible one at that. We're returning to the middle ages, it's as simple as that. I don't mean technologically (the middle ages weren't all that primitive, they had knowledge, they just didn't have any economic application for it in a lot of places. But look at the cathedrals and trading houses they built : the problem was not that know-how had disappeared entirely, it just wasn't useful in 99% of places). I mean the employment situation : 95%+ unemployment (if you don't count subsistence farmers, and you shouldn't).
- Guvante 13y ago
  > Only for unsolved problems, and only if you can actually afford it (both mostly mean competition is limited or non-existant). You are taking a very naive viewpoint of work. If you abstract everything away, of course it is impossible to find value in your employees. Lets take a simple example, say a Walmart employee who stocks shelves. Walmart will figure out how efficient they think a person should be, lets say they determine it should take 20 minutes to stack a shelf. Now lets take Bob, Bob can do a shelf in 15 minutes without too much effort. Unless Walmart finds a way to encourage Bob to go above and beyond, Bob will never do 15 minute averages, why would he? By treating Bob as an expense you have thrown away 33% of your capacity. The difficulty becomes finding the Bobs and deducing how to encourage them properly.

by Guvante 13y ago

waps 13y ago

Only for unsolved problems, and only if you can actually afford it (both mostly mean competition is limited or non-existant). Otherwise, that won't work. It's a matter of time (decades, probably, but limited) until IT work turns into that as well. There was a time when helpdesk work was a well-paid satisfying job. Unions were merely a consequence of effectively 100% employment, and a pretty horrible one at that. We're returning to the middle ages, it's as simple as that. I don't mean technologically (the middle ages weren't all that primitive, they had knowledge, they just didn't have any economic application for it in a lot of places. But look at the cathedrals and trading houses they built : the problem was not that know-how had disappeared entirely, it just wasn't useful in 99% of places). I mean the employment situation : 95%+ unemployment (if you don't count subsistence farmers, and you shouldn't).

Guvante 13y ago
> Only for unsolved problems, and only if you can actually afford it (both mostly mean competition is limited or non-existant). You are taking a very naive viewpoint of work. If you abstract everything away, of course it is impossible to find value in your employees. Lets take a simple example, say a Walmart employee who stocks shelves. Walmart will figure out how efficient they think a person should be, lets say they determine it should take 20 minutes to stack a shelf. Now lets take Bob, Bob can do a shelf in 15 minutes without too much effort. Unless Walmart finds a way to encourage Bob to go above and beyond, Bob will never do 15 minute averages, why would he? By treating Bob as an expense you have thrown away 33% of your capacity. The difficulty becomes finding the Bobs and deducing how to encourage them properly.