<story><title>What if jobs are not the solution but the problem?</title><url>https://aeon.co/essays/what-if-jobs-are-not-the-solution-but-the-problem</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>cesarbs</author><text>This is the bit that hits close to home to me:&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; they must demonstrate commitment above and beyond their contracted work hours, and express constant satisfaction and happiness about their work&lt;p&gt;My wife and I are both software engineers and that is a nearly constant source of stress for us. In our experience, people in our field frown upon people who treat software engineering as just their job. Two things I recall from my experience that illustrate this:&lt;p&gt;- I had a team lead who once said, &amp;quot;I don&amp;#x27;t want people in this team working like this is a 9-5 job&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;- Something I heard from someone in a team that worked close to ours: &amp;quot;the candidate was solid in problem solving and coding ability, but we didn&amp;#x27;t hire them because they didn&amp;#x27;t show passion&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;This sort of bullshit is pervasive in our field and IMO is what the quote above is referring to.</text></item><item><author>vacri</author><text>Are you serious? Knowledge workers have it &lt;i&gt;easy&lt;/i&gt;. It&amp;#x27;s hard to get here, but once we&amp;#x27;re here it&amp;#x27;s a great gig. We&amp;#x27;re paid well, we&amp;#x27;re in demand, and there&amp;#x27;s a robust freelancing sector to our industries, be it software, legal, medical, engineering, or whatever.&lt;p&gt;That link describes a &lt;i&gt;call center worker&lt;/i&gt; as a knowledge worker. That&amp;#x27;s absolute nonsense. You could, in theory, argue that a call center worker is about managing some sort of knowledge, but in truth they deal with less knowledge than a subsistence farmer, who has to know a hell of a lot about agronomy.&lt;p&gt;Classifying call center drones (of which I was once one) as &amp;#x27;knowledge workers&amp;#x27;, and then using them to discuss how hard knowledge workers have it, is beyond disingenuous.</text></item><item><author>cesarbs</author><text>Another good read on the topic: &lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;newramblerreview.com&amp;#x2F;book-reviews&amp;#x2F;political-science&amp;#x2F;the-shame-of-work#.WDH4ARBQD-M.email&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;newramblerreview.com&amp;#x2F;book-reviews&amp;#x2F;political-science&amp;#x2F;t...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;I like this bit:&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;the knowledge worker is under severe external constraints. Much of their work is assisted or mediated through information technology, which contributes to a de-skilling of their cognitive labor. And on top of this they are expected to fully invest themselves in their jobs in a way that manufacturing laborers never did: they must demonstrate commitment above and beyond their contracted work hours, and express constant satisfaction and happiness about their work. The whole thing is exhausting.&amp;quot;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>thirdsun</author><text>It doesn&amp;#x27;t have to be like that. Personally, I work for a small company that manufactures a physical product (shoes actually) and manages a few retail stores, but also develops most of its internal software (CRM, ERP, BI), tools, website and shop in-house, which results in the fact that development and software engineering is just one of many areas the company focuses on.&lt;p&gt;I can&amp;#x27;t remember the last time I couldn&amp;#x27;t leave 4 pm sharp with the rest of the colleagues from manufacturing, sales, design or accounting. It&amp;#x27;s certainly long ago and rarely happens.&lt;p&gt;Plus, being a two man dev operation we enjoy a lot of freedom and are able to chose technologies and tools we see fit for the task. Furthermore you are confronted with all kinds of real world problems, interact with people of all trades (as opposed to living in a SV startup bubble) and colleagues value our work, actually perceive it as some kind of magic (in contrast to being code monkeys). To me this is a very enjoyable work environment, that combines the best parts of a 9-5 job and exciting startup atmosphere.</text></comment>
<story><title>What if jobs are not the solution but the problem?</title><url>https://aeon.co/essays/what-if-jobs-are-not-the-solution-but-the-problem</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>cesarbs</author><text>This is the bit that hits close to home to me:&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; they must demonstrate commitment above and beyond their contracted work hours, and express constant satisfaction and happiness about their work&lt;p&gt;My wife and I are both software engineers and that is a nearly constant source of stress for us. In our experience, people in our field frown upon people who treat software engineering as just their job. Two things I recall from my experience that illustrate this:&lt;p&gt;- I had a team lead who once said, &amp;quot;I don&amp;#x27;t want people in this team working like this is a 9-5 job&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;- Something I heard from someone in a team that worked close to ours: &amp;quot;the candidate was solid in problem solving and coding ability, but we didn&amp;#x27;t hire them because they didn&amp;#x27;t show passion&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;This sort of bullshit is pervasive in our field and IMO is what the quote above is referring to.</text></item><item><author>vacri</author><text>Are you serious? Knowledge workers have it &lt;i&gt;easy&lt;/i&gt;. It&amp;#x27;s hard to get here, but once we&amp;#x27;re here it&amp;#x27;s a great gig. We&amp;#x27;re paid well, we&amp;#x27;re in demand, and there&amp;#x27;s a robust freelancing sector to our industries, be it software, legal, medical, engineering, or whatever.&lt;p&gt;That link describes a &lt;i&gt;call center worker&lt;/i&gt; as a knowledge worker. That&amp;#x27;s absolute nonsense. You could, in theory, argue that a call center worker is about managing some sort of knowledge, but in truth they deal with less knowledge than a subsistence farmer, who has to know a hell of a lot about agronomy.&lt;p&gt;Classifying call center drones (of which I was once one) as &amp;#x27;knowledge workers&amp;#x27;, and then using them to discuss how hard knowledge workers have it, is beyond disingenuous.</text></item><item><author>cesarbs</author><text>Another good read on the topic: &lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;newramblerreview.com&amp;#x2F;book-reviews&amp;#x2F;political-science&amp;#x2F;the-shame-of-work#.WDH4ARBQD-M.email&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;newramblerreview.com&amp;#x2F;book-reviews&amp;#x2F;political-science&amp;#x2F;t...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;I like this bit:&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;the knowledge worker is under severe external constraints. Much of their work is assisted or mediated through information technology, which contributes to a de-skilling of their cognitive labor. And on top of this they are expected to fully invest themselves in their jobs in a way that manufacturing laborers never did: they must demonstrate commitment above and beyond their contracted work hours, and express constant satisfaction and happiness about their work. The whole thing is exhausting.&amp;quot;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>meekins</author><text>What bothers me the most about this is that passion and wish to work 9-5 are considered mutually exclusive. This feels like passion for software engineering just means passion for cranking out code for the company 24&amp;#x2F;7.&lt;p&gt;Of course this is just a personal anecdote but during heavier work weeks I have very little energy or interest in any spare time hacking. In contrast on normal 9-5 weeks I tend to do a lot more of reading, coding and other things that develop my professional skills and enable me to perform better in my day job.</text></comment>